Lillian and Dash

by Sam Toperoff

  Also every three months the company was required to make a four-mile forced march at double time. It became an ordeal for Hammett over the last mile and a half—his lungs betrayed him—but even though he fell behind he always finished, and he was never among the worst stragglers. He did need two days at least to recapture what was left of his strength.

  THE COMMANDER OF SIGNAL BATTALION, Alaskan Department, was Colonel Orville Avery, an engineering graduate of West Point, whose specialty was telegraphic communications. The battalion’s main mission was the construction of telegraph lines on all the islands on which the army had deployed troops. And to set up wireless radio stations at all outposts to monitor the Jap Morse communications, which were usually encoded. As a result most of the U.S. troops stationed in the Aleutians dug holes, poured cement, set poles, strung wires, and trained in case of a possible Jap attack to be able to defend their featureless terrain. Hammett had met Colonel Avery on two occasions—once when Avery toured the Adakian office and then when Hammett was promoted to tech sergeant. Hammett never heard from his commanding officer about the newspaper, which meant that he either had no complaints or was no longer aware of its existence. Either way, Hammett was satisfied.

  It came as a surprise, then, when his company commander had a jeep sent to his Quonset with orders to take Hammett to battalion headquarters for a meeting with Colonel Avery, Colonel’s orders. Hammett was given no sense of the colonel’s intention. He assumed the worst, problems with his left-leaning editorials, drawn from information gleaned from Commonweal and The Nation, two of the periodicals Lillian had sent. He did not want to lose his newspaper. That’s how he had come to think of it—his newspaper.

  Avery—glasses, crew cut, red cherubic face—was sitting behind his desk when Sergeant Hammett entered, reported, saluted, and held his salute as Colonel Avery muttered, “At ease, Sergeant.” Five copies of recent Adakians were on his desk.

  “These cartoons of yours, Hammett. What in the world were you thinking?”

  “Sir?”

  “A newspaper is supposed to boost morale, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I believe the men think they’re moderately funny, sir.”

  “This one, funny? Captain leads his company up a volcano and says, ‘Keep going, men, at least we’ll be able to get warm.’ Can’t you see?”

  “Excuse me, see what, sir?”

  “It makes the officer look stupid. So do these others. A major talking to a walrus, ‘Seen any Japs come ashore?’ Two generals arguing about how to spell archipelago. An officer with a compass asking an Eskimo which way is north. You make us all look like a bunch of prize morons.”

  “The men like to think they can laugh at their officers, sir. It’s really a form of equality that denotes respect, sir.”

  “Bullshit, Hammett. If it doesn’t stop immediately, I’ll ship your sorry old ass the hell out of here.”

  “Understood, sir. Anything else, sir?”

  “Otherwise, good paper. Dismissed.”

  Older man and younger man exchanged salutes.

  LILLIAN AT HARDSCRABBLE was healthy and strong, very strong.

  For her the last moments of wakefulness in her large bed at night were the sweetest of her long day; she was conscious of how vital she was, intellectually and physically. Farmwork pleased her enormously. She loved feeling the tautness of her stomach muscles, the strength in her thighs, the muscularity of her arms and back. She wrote Hammett, “My ass muscles would make Rodin drool.”

  Lillian thought of Hammett in a somewhat new fashion. Her attraction had always, from the very beginning, been based on admiration. They always differed over how deserved it was. Now, really for the first time, envy was present. Even when they had been separated in the past, she knew part of him belonged to her. She no longer felt that way. The world of men he inhabited now gave her the sense that Hammett no longer needed her. His letters were mostly about that masculine world, and, yes, they did evoke her jealousy.

  James Roosevelt’s office called again from Washington with a request that she heard as an opportunity. No, not another propaganda film. This time something much more active, participatory, perhaps even somewhat dangerous. The tide of the war on the Russian front had turned dramatically after Stalingrad and the Red Army was now sweeping westward through Poland and toward Germany. Did Lillian wish to accompany that army and write about its advance? The Russians had actually requested her presence and participation.

  Lillian wanted very much to see the war. At least that envy of Hammett would be dealt with. And she wanted to see the war won. Wasn’t this, after all, the reversal of the misfortunes she had witnessed in Spain years before, the just conclusion she had hoped for then?

  The trip to Moscow tested her physically and emotionally. Thirty-six hours in a variety of transport planes with stops in Anchorage—Hammett could not have been too far away—and Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Novgorod—she’d heard of that city, at least—and stopovers in places that had no names.

  After three days in Moscow being wined and dined and fussed over, and after seeing a lifeless performance of The Little Foxes that offered more Chekhovian ennui than Hellman rage, and another good evening talking about film with Sergei Eisenstein, Lillian was more anxious than ever to see the war. And especially to see it being won.

  A small military transport finally took her and a young captain who spoke passable English to Warsaw and then on a second hop to within a hundred miles of Prague, from where Lillian and her interpreter joined a truck supply route to the Second Armored Division, which had fought at Stalingrad and was now pushing inexorably toward Germany itself. She was perhaps a day or two from the siege of Prague. She wrote in her notebook:

  Fighting and war are two very different matters. I have seen war, and war is destruction, destruction of lives, of what has been carefully built, of plans, of the very spirit that underlies all these things, the spark that allows what is human in us to ignite in the first place. War is the snuffing of that flame. War is civilization’s funeral. War is the face of a very beautiful dead woman in Madrid.

  Fighting is a different creature entirely. It is energy and force of will. It is vengeance and sinew brought to fever pitch. It thrives and flames in its own time, self-contained, unmindful, and, of course, unaware of what future fighting it will bring. It feeds on itself. And while it lives it is more alive than anything else men do. More alive than laughter, more alive, if you can believe it, than the exhilaration and expectation of sex.

  Kurin not only kills von Harden … a part of him enjoys doing it. To my shame, I anticipate sharing his enjoyment.

  Lillian joined the Second Armored Division on the eastern shore of the Vltava as it bombarded the Germans and Czech fascists who defended the city with heavy cannon fire and multiple rocket launchers continually. Lillian wadded cotton in her ears and pulled her beret down over them. Russian planes bombed and strafed the city during daylight hours.

  German artillery returned fire from the heights across the river. Their firepower remained substantial no matter how much damage the Russians believed they had caused. Much of the old city would have to be destroyed before any attempt could be made to cross the river. It puzzled Lillian: The situation was hopeless. Why won’t the bastards surrender?

  She wrote:

  The Russians have set up headquarters in an old Customs House on the eastern quay of the Vltava. From here I see the great Gothic city above us to the west on the other side of the rushing river, almost invulnerable to direct attack since none of her many bridges remained intact. There is no telling how long the bombardment from artillery and air attack must continue. Pieces of Prague crumble daily before my very eyes.

  Our command post has been hit repeatedly by German artillery. Still, we are safe in its basement. Most days I watch the effect of the artillery assault on the old city. I had been in Prague briefly years ago during my honeymoon and remember standing on the rampart of Praha Castle at night and looking down over the glittering t
own, the black Vltava reflecting the stars. Now I look through field glasses and see those same ramparts, still intact because it, the great cathedral, and the monastery beyond have been spared until this point. I spend hours scanning the city; it is impossible for me to turn away from any civilian activity—the attempt to clear debris, a delivery of food, a family moving to a safer place—all that I can see through my glasses.

  Here is what I saw not more than one hour ago. From just below the piling of the Charles Bridge my eye caught a fleck of white and then another. Slowly, from behind the stone wall of the boathouse three figures emerged, a woman, a man, a child. The child, a girl, was waving a white scarf. The woman waved a white hat. The man, short and wide, carried what appeared to be a wooden platform. When he placed it at water’s edge, it was clear he had been carrying a small raft.

  This was most likely a family, and they were trying to escape the bombardment by crossing the river and joining the Russians. The three lay flat on the raft, parents atop the child; they drifted out into the river. The father had a short paddle. The mother never stopped waving her daughter’s white scarf.

  The raft was about a quarter of the way across the Vltava when shots at them from the other side of the river began to pelt the waters around them. When the father was hit, his knees came up suddenly and then he slipped into the river, his wife and daughter held him briefly before he tumbled off the raft. The raft tipped over, plunging the woman and child into the water. The mother clung to the raft while the current started to pull the girl away. She reached for her child too late and after a terrible moment began swimming after her daughter.

  She and then the daughter were overwhelmed by the current at midriver. I saw the white hat and the white scarf touch, entangle, and get carried downstream.

  . 17 .

  Shock, Aftershock

  ZENIA HEARD FIRST and simply went to pieces. When I got to the kitchen, she was on her knees sobbing, “No, oh no, oh no.” Her son was standing soldier-straight against the wall. He looked frightened. Zenia said, “He’s dead. The president. He’s dead.” I went to my knees and we held each other, sobbing, both sobbing.

  She had heard the news on the radio. Now we sat with coffee and listened while more complete information came. It was late afternoon, a Thursday. Cerebral hemorrhage. He complained of a terrible headache, terrible, slumped over unconscious. It all happened so fast.

  The sun was low.

  I noticed that Gilbert did not understand our extreme grief, so I explained to him that his mother and I loved President Roosevelt very much and that we were taken by surprise that he had died. Gilbert wanted to know how old he was. “Sixty-four, sixty-five,” I thought.

  “Ain’t that plenty old enough to die, Mama?”

  Zenia looked at me to respond. “You miss someone however old he is, Gilbert. And the president is a very important someone to us. The war, we need him to win the war.”

  “Are we going to lose the war now?”

  “No, Gilbert, we’re going to win the war, but he won’t be there to see it, and that’s really sad.”

  Max didn’t allow me to cry as a child. I learned to cry after I met Hammett, but I pretty much got over that. The war, its destruction, its victims, rarely brought me to tears. But I was weeping now. The cello voice I loved silenced. I don’t know why, but I asked Zenia if I could hold Gilbert. He looked over at her to see if he ought to step into my arms. Zenia said, “Go on.”

  The boy’s hair roughed my cheek. My tears flowed onto him. His strong body was wire-stiff. He smelled like a newborn. I said, “You always have to remember this day, Gilbert. Always. It is the day a very great man died.” It was a speech out of a scene I’d never write.

  When the phone rang I didn’t answer. It couldn’t have been Hammett. Seven time zones away, he may not even have gotten the news. Goddamned war.

  We listened to the radio in the kitchen all evening. We cooked a little. Ate some egg sandwiches. Excerpts from many of his recent speeches filled the kitchen. How clear they were. How strong. How smart. How comforting. Even now. It was exactly the voice I heard when he telephoned me about the North Star project. That voice was presidential but sweeter, more charming. He wanted something from me that day.

  The radio told of preliminary plans being made for the funeral. FDR’s casket would be transported slowly northward by train along the eastern shore. Mourners could pay respects as the funeral train made its way toward Washington. It would slow for the mourners. After resting in state at the capitol, the president would be carried home to Hyde Park, New York, which is only about half an hour away from here. I’ll drive over in a month or so.

  It bothered me again that Hammett wouldn’t allow himself to see his greatness. Our fight, the worst we’d ever had, wasn’t about drinking or lying or fucking around, it was about FDR, about what he meant. It was hard to trust Hammett’s judgment about anything political after that.

  After Zenia saw Gilbert to sleep, we sat and listened to the radio. Zenia, who didn’t drink, had a glass of sherry with me. When she started to cry, I started to cry again. She said she was crying because her people lost a friend. Then she said she was crying for Mrs. Roosevelt.

  That’s when I thought of James and wondered how I would get in touch to offer my condolences.

  The radio voice told us in glowing terms about the new president. Praise was heaped upon this little-known and little-accomplished man. The radio text dutifully reminded us how remarkable our democracy was, since a new president had already replaced the old and this process had taken place swiftly and peacefully. “We can thank our lucky stars—or rather our wise and benevolent Founding Fathers—that we are the world’s leading constitutional democracy, a nation of laws and not of men, whereas in many other parts of the world …”

  Why do they have to spoil things with crap like that?

  I KNEW SOMETHING WAS up when Colonel Avery made The Adakian a biweekly and put us all on an active training schedule. Full-time training and the paper made our once sweet lives a hell on Kiska. That was about three months ago.

  If that didn’t make it abundantly clear that an attack on the Jap mainland was imminent, the nature of our new training assured it. Have you ever scrambled over the side of a troop ship at three in the morning, climbed down a rope ladder that tore your hands apart, crammed yourself into an LST in open sea with a hundred other guys? And doing it all under full field pack? Twice a day? Every day? Toughest thing I ever did. Even when I was young. Still, I managed to keep up. ’Nuff said.

  An army doesn’t travel on its stomach. It travels on rumors. In our Aleutian army all rumors pointed to a Hokkaido attack in the summer. I clearly remember looking around the barracks or the mess hall, especially in the LST, looking into the faces of the kids and realizing they could not all survive the attack. I caught myself looking around and trying to imagine which ones would be killed. I blacked out faces arbitrarily—He doesn’t make it. He does. This one, no. This one, yes. No, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no. That is how it will be, just that arbitrary, only it will be a capricious god who pushes the blackout button.

  Mornings were freezing cold. It was May. I had gotten to the point where I was coming to welcome the goddamned invasion. If I get blacked out, so be it, just as long as I didn’t have to climb down that effing ladder with bleeding hands. We trained vigorously until summer, and then as quickly as it began, training ended.

  Russo, who wrote sports for the paper, ran into the Quonset breathless with the news: “Over, it’s almost over.” He gasped and pointed to the shortwave. Boudine found some American news from Anchorage. A superbomb is what they were calling it. An explosion to end all explosions. Not like anything in human history, they said. At 8:15 a.m. Broad daylight. The entire city of Hiroshima destroyed, completely leveled by a single bomb. Most of the population killed instantly. Government officials were calling the weapon an atomic bomb, reported to have the destructive power of one thousand of the biggest bombs in our arsenal
. A single bomb. Reports are that the entire horizon was lighted like a second sunrise before a great mushroom cloud filled the sky.

  The announcer did not mention specific casualties or the population of Hiroshima, which I knew to be just short of half a million. It was not easy to see them as human beings in the same way I saw the boys gathered around the shortwave. I cared not a whit about them, so it didn’t matter at that moment to me that for the people of Hiroshima there were no individual yeses and nos; no lottery for them, they were all blacked out in an instant.

  I knew it was possible, theoretically possible, but not now, so suddenly, like this. Used on civilians? This Truman. His decision to make, and the little man made it. I wondered if the great man would have made it. To the little man it was Save American lives and the devil be damned. Of course Churchill had a major hand in this thing. A message loud and clear to Uncle Joe.

  When all’s said and done, terrible as this thing is, and the dubious ethics of war aside, this may have been the best way after all. That landing at Hokkaido would have been a fight to the death, far worse for us than Guadalcanal and Saipan and Okinawa combined. It would have been a ring of hell. Russo, Boudine, all the kids on The Adakian, even old man Hammett his own self, I wouldn’t have wanted to see a single one of us blacked out. I’ll pass on judgment for now since …

  . 18 .

  Comm-a-nists

  OTHER THAN GOING to “21,” Lilly and Dash liked to celebrate during the after-war healing and adjustment at Café Society, the club down on Sheridan Square in the Village, especially when the pianist Hazel Scott was playing there. Hammett was absolutely wild about her. For him no one rivaled her technique, her brio; only Art Tatum and Bud Powell came close. And some singer too.

  Café Society was classy and intimate and chic, the flavor of a Paris bistro with a touch of Viennese elegance. Anyone who was anyone in New York—or aspired to be anyone—tried very hard to be seen here. Lilly and Dash were regulars. So were Ed Murrow, Martha Graham, Ezio Pinza, Leopold Stokowski, Gypsy Rose Lee, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker, Noël Coward, and Fiorello La Guardia and his wife Marie. Such was the clientele of Café Society.