For Esmé, With Love and Squalor Page 10

  When he let go of his head, X began to stare at the surface of the writing table, which was a catchall for at least two dozen unopened letters and at least five or six unopened packages, all addressed to him. He reached behind the debris and picked out a book that stood against the wall. It was a book by Goebbels, entitled “Die Zeit Ohne Beispiel.” It belonged to the thirty-eight-year-old, unmarried daughter of the family that, up to a few weeks earlier, had been living in the house. She had been a low official in the Nazi Party, but high enough, by Army Regulations standards, to fall into an automatic-arrest category. X himself had arrested her. Now, for the third time since he had returned from the hospital that day, he opened the woman’s book and read the brief inscription on the flyleaf. Written in ink, in German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the words “Dear God, life is hell.” Nothing led up to or away from it. Alone on the page, and in the sickly stillness of the room, the words appeared to have the stature of an uncontestable, even classic indictment. X stared at the page for several minutes, trying, against heavy odds, not to be taken in. Then, with far more zeal than he had done anything in weeks, he picked up a pencil stub and wrote down under the inscription, in English, “Fathers and teachers, I ponder ‘What is hell?’ I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” He started to write Dostoevski’s name under the inscription, but saw—with fright that ran through his whole body—that what he had written was almost entirely illegible. He shut the book.

  He quickly picked up something else from the table, a letter from his older brother in Albany. It had been on his table even before he had checked into the hospital. He opened the envelope, loosely resolved to read the letter straight through, but read only the top half of the first page. He stopped after the words “Now that the g.d. war is over and you probably have a lot of time over there, how about sending the kids a couple of bayonets or swastikas . . .” After he’d torn it up, he looked down at the pieces as they lay in the wastebasket. He saw that he had overlooked an enclosed snapshot. He could make out somebody’s feet standing on a lawn somewhere.

  He put his arms on the table and rested his head on them. He ached from head to foot, all zones of pain seemingly interdependent. He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights, wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective.

  The door banged open, without having been rapped on. X raised his head, turned it, and saw Corporal Z standing in the door. Corporal Z had been X’s jeep partner and constant companion from D Day straight through five campaigns of the war. He lived on the first floor and he usually came up to see X when he had a few rumors or gripes to unload. He was a huge, photogenic young man of twenty-four. During the war, a national magazine had photographed him in Hurtgen Forest; he had posed, more than just obligingly, with a Thanksgiving turkey in each hand. “Ya writin’ letters?” he asked X. “It’s spooky in here, for Chrissake.” He preferred always to enter a room that had the overhead light on.

  X turned around in his chair and asked him to come in, and to be careful not to step on the dog.

  “The what?”

  “Alvin. He’s right under your feet, Clay. How ‘bout turning on the goddam light?”

  Clay found the overhead-light switch, flicked it on, then stepped across the puny, servant’s-size room and sat down on the edge of the bed, facing his host. His brick-red hair, just combed, was dripping with the amount of water he required for satisfactory grooming. A comb with a fountain-pen clip protruded, familiarly, from the right-hand pocket of his olive-drab shirt. Over the left-hand pocket he was wearing the Combat Infantrymen’s Badge (which, technically, he wasn’t authorized to wear), the European Theatre ribbon, with five bronze battle stars in it (instead of a lone silver one, which was the equivalent of five bronze ones), and the pre-Pearl Harbor service ribbon. He sighed heavily and said, “Christ almighty.” It meant nothing; it was Army. He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, tapped one out, then put away the pack and rebuttoned the pocket flap. Smoking, he looked vacuously around the room. His look finally settled on the radio. “Hey,” he said. “They got this terrific show comin’ on the radio in a coupla minutes. Bob Hope, and everybody.”

  X, opening a fresh pack of cigarettes, said he had just turned the radio off.

  Undarkened, Clay watched X trying to get a cigarette lit. “Jesus,” he said, with spectator’s enthusiasm, “you oughta see your goddam hands. Boy, have you got the shakes. Ya know that?”

  X got his cigarette lit, nodded, and said Clay had a real eye for detail.

  “No kidding, hey. I goddam near fainted when I saw you at the hospital. You looked like a goddam corpse. How much weight ya lose? How many pounds? Ya know?”

  “I don’t know. How was your mail when I was gone? You heard from Loretta?”

  Loretta was Clay’s girl. They intended to get married at their earliest convenience. She wrote to him fairly regularly, from a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations. All through the war, Clay had read all Loretta’s letters aloud to X, however intimate they were—in fact, the more intimate, the better. It was his custom, after each reading, to ask X to plot out or pad out the letter of reply, or to insert a few impressive words in French or German.

  “Yeah, I had a letter from her yesterday. Down in my room. Show it to ya later,” Clay said, listlessly. He sat up straight on the edge of the bed, held his breath, and issued a long, resonant belch. Looking just semi-pleased with the achievement, he relaxed again. “Her goddam brother’s gettin’ outa the Navy on account of his hip,” he said. “He’s got this hip, the bastard.” He sat up again and tried for another belch, but with below-par results. A jot of alertness came into his face. “Hey. Before I forget. We gotta get up at five tomorrow and drive to Hamburg or someplace. Pick up Eisenhower jackets for the whole detachment.”

  X, regarding him hostilely, stated that he didn’t want an Eisenhower jacket.

  Clay looked surprised, almost a trifle hurt. “Oh, they’re good! They look good. How come?”

  “No reason. Why do we have to get up at five? The war’s over, for God’s sake.”

  “I don’t know—we gotta get back before lunch. They got some new forms in we gotta fill out before lunch. . . . I asked Bulling how come we couldn’t fill ’em out tonight—he’s got the goddam forms right on his desk. He don’t want to open the envelopes yet, the son of a bitch.”

  The two sat quiet for a moment, hating Bulling. Clay suddenly looked at X with new-higher-interest than before. “Hey,” he said. “Did you know the goddam side of your face is jumping all over the place?”

  X said he knew all about it, and covered his tic with his hand.

  Clay stared at him for a moment, then said, rather vividly, as if he were the bearer of exceptionally good news, “I wrote Loretta you had a nervous breakdown.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. She’s interested as hell in all that stuff. She’s majoring in psychology.” Clay stretched himself out on the bed, shoes included. “You know what she said? She says nobody gets a nervous breakdown just from the war and all. She says you probably were unstable like, your whole goddam life.”

  X bridged his hands over his eyes—the light over the bed seemed to be blinding him—and said that Loretta’s insight into things was always a joy.

  Clay glanced over at him. “Listen, ya bastard,” he said. “She knows a goddam sight more psychology than you do.”

  “Do you think you can bring yourself to take your stinking feet off my bed?” X asked.

  Clay left his feet where they were for a few don’t-tell-me-where-to-put-my-feet seconds, then swung them around to the floor and sat up. “I’m goin’ downstairs anyway. They got the radio on in Walker’s room.” He didn’t get up from the bed, though. “Hey. I was just tellin’ that new son of a bitch, Bernstein, downstairs. Remember that time I and you drove into Valognes, and we got shelled for about two goddam hours
, and that goddam cat I shot that jumped up on the hood of the jeep when we were layin’ in that hole? Remember?”

  “Yes—don’t start that business with that cat again, Clay, God damn it. I don’t want to hear about it.”

  “No, all I mean is I wrote Loretta about it. She and the whole psychology class discussed it. In class and all. The goddam professor and everybody.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t want to hear about it, Clay.”

  “No, you know the reason I took a pot shot at it, Loretta says? She says I was temporarily insane. No kidding. From the shelling and all.”

  X threaded his fingers, once, through his dirty hair, then shielded his eyes against the light again. “You weren’t insane. You were simply doing your duty. You killed that pussycat in as manly a way as anybody could’ve under the circumstances.”

  Clay looked at him suspiciously. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

  “That cat was a spy. You had to take a pot shot at it. It was a very clever German midget dressed up in a cheap fur coat. So there was absolutely nothing brutal, or cruel, or dirty, or even—”

  “God damn it!” Clay said, his lips thinned. “Can’t you ever be sincere?”

  X suddenly felt sick, and he swung around in his chair and grabbed the wastebasket—just in time. When he had straightened up and turned toward his guest again, he found him standing, embarrassed, halfway between the bed and the door. X started to apologize, but changed his mind and reached for his cigarettes.

  “C’mon down and listen to Hope on the radio, hey,” Clay said, keeping his distance but trying to be friendly over it. “It’ll do ya good. I mean it.”

  “You go ahead, Clay. . . . I’ll look at my stamp collection.”

  “Yeah? You got a stamp collection? I didn’t know you—”

  “I’m only kidding.”

  Clay took a couple of slow steps toward the door. “I may drive over to Ehstadt later,” he said. “They got a dance. It’ll probably last till around two. Wanna go?”

  “No, thanks. . . . I may practice a few steps in the room.”

  “O.K. G’night! Take it easy, now, for Chrissake.” The door slammed shut, then instantly opened again. “Hey. O.K. if I leave a letter to Loretta under your door? I got some German stuff in it. Willya fix it up for me?”

  “Yes. Leave me alone now, God damn it.”

  “Sure,” said Clay. “You know what my mother wrote me? She wrote me she’s glad you and I were together and all the whole war. In the same jeep and all. She says my letters are a helluva lot more intelligent since we been goin’ around together.”

  X looked up and over at him, and said, with great effort, “Thanks. Tell her thanks for me.”

  “I will. G’night!” The door slammed shut, this time for good.

  X sat looking at the door for a long while, then turned his chair around toward the writing table and picked up his portable typewriter from the floor. He made space for it on the messy table surface, pushing aside the collapsed pile of unopened letters and packages. He thought if he wrote a letter to an old friend of his in New York there might be some quick, however slight, therapy in it for him. But he couldn’t insert his notepaper into the roller properly, his fingers were shaking so violently now. He put his hands down at his sides for a minute, then tried again, but finally crumpled the notepaper in his hand.

  He was aware that he ought to get the wastebasket out of the room, but instead of doing anything about it, he put his arms on the typewriter and rested his head again, closing his eyes.

  A few throbbing minutes later, when he opened his eyes, he found himself squinting at a small, unopened package wrapped in green paper. It had probably slipped off the pile when he had made space for the typewriter. He saw that it had been readdressed several times. He could make out, on just one side of the package, at least three of his old A.P.O. numbers.

  He opened the package without any interest, without even looking at the return address. He opened it by burning the string with a lighted match. He was more interested in watching a string burn all the way down than in opening the package, but he opened it, finally.

  Inside the box, a note, written in ink, lay on top of a small object wrapped in tissue paper. He picked out the note and read it.

  17, ——road,

  ——, devon

  june 7, 1944

  Dear Sergeant X,

  I hope you will forgive me for having taken 38 days to begin our correspondence but, I have been extremely busy as my aunt has undergone streptococcus of the throat and nearly perished and I have been justifiably saddled with one responsibility after another. However I have thought of you frequently and of the extremely pleasant afternoon we spent in each other’s company on April 30, 1944 between 3:45 and 4:15 P.M. in case it slipped your mind.

  We are all tremendously excited and overawed about D Day and only hope that it will bring about the swift termination of the war and a method of existence that is ridiculous to say the least. Charles and I are both quite concerned about you; we hope you were not among those who made the first initial assault upon the Cotentin Peninsula. Were you? Please reply as speedily as possible. My warmest regards to your wife.

  Sincerely yours,

  Esmé

  P.S. I am taking the liberty of enclosing my wristwatch which you may keep in your possession for the duration of the conflict. I did not observe whether you were wearing one during our brief association, but this one is extremely water-proof and shockproof as well as having many other virtues among which one can tell at what velocity one is walking if one wishes. I am quite certain that you will use it to greater advantage in these difficult days than I ever can and that you will accept it as a lucky talisman.

  Charles, whom I am teaching to read and write and whom I am finding an extremely intelligent novice, wishes to add a few words. Please write as soon as you have the time and inclination.

  hello hello hello hello hello

  hello hello hello hello hello

  love and kisses chales

  It was a long time before X could set the note aside, let alone lift Esmé’s father’s wristwatch out of the box. When he did finally lift it out, he saw that its crystal had been broken in transit. He wondered if the watch was otherwise undamaged, but he hadn’t the courage to wind it and find out. He just sat with it in his hand for another long period. Then, suddenly, almost ecstatically, he felt sleepy.

  You take a really sleepy man, Esmé, and he always stands a chance of again becoming a man with all his fac—with all his f-a-c-u-1-t-i-e-s intact.

  * * *

  Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes

  * * *

  When the phone rang, the gray-haired man asked the girl, with quite some little deference, if she would rather for any reason he didn’t answer it. The girl heard him as if from a distance, and turned her face toward him, one eye—on the side of the light—closed tight, her open eye very, however disingenuously, large, and so blue as to appear almost violet. The grayhaired man asked her to hurry up, and she raised up on her right forearm just quickly enough so that the movement didn’t quite look perfunctory. She cleared her hair back from her forehead with her left hand and said, “God. I don’t know. I mean what do you think?” The gray-haired man said he didn’t see that it made a helluva lot of difference one way or the other, and slipped his left hand under the girl’s supporting arm, above the elbow, working his fingers up, making room for them between the warm surfaces of her upper arm and chest wall. He reached for the phone with his right hand. To reach it without groping, he had to raise himself somewhat higher, which caused the back of his head to graze a comer of the lampshade. In that instant, the light was particularly, if rather vividly, flattering to his gray, mostly white, hair. Though in disarrangement at that moment, it had obviously been freshly cut—or, rather, freshly maintained. The neckline and temples had been trimmed conventionally close, but the sides
and top had been left rather more than just longish, and were, in fact, a trifle “distinguished-looking.” “Hello?” he said resonantly into the phone. The girl stayed propped up on her forearm and watched him. Her eyes, more just open than alert or speculative, reflected chiefly their own size and color.

  A man’s voice—stone dead, yet somehow rudely, almost obscenely quickened for the occasion—came through at the other end: “Lee? I wake you?”

  The gray-haired man glanced briefly left, at the girl. “Who’s that?” he asked. “Arthur?”

  “Yeah—I wake you?”

  “No, no. I’m in bed, reading. Anything wrong?”

  “You sure I didn’t wake you? Honest to God?”

  “No, no—absolutely,” the gray-haired man said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been averaging about four lousy hours—”

  “The reason I called, Lee, did you happen to notice when Joanie was leaving? Did you happen to notice if she left with the Ellenbogens, by any chance?”

  The gray-haired man looked left again, but high this time, away from the girl, who was now watching him rather like a young, blue-eyed Irish policeman. “No, I didn’t, Arthur,” he said, his eyes on the far, dim end of the room, where the wall met the ceiling. “Didn’t she leave with you?”