by Herman Wouk
“Screaming helps pass the time.”
“The Navy isn’t all Queegs by a long shot.”
“Of course not. He’s a waste product of the system. Buckled into a monster because his feeble little personality can’t stand the pressure of Navy standards- This is fine champagne, by the bye, pity you don’t appreciate it- But Steve, the real Navy is a tight little father-and-son group. It’s a tradition, like the British governing class. You don’t shine in. You’d just be one of the lowly timeservers-”
“You think fishing is useful. Well, I think manning Navy ships is useful. They’re coming in goddamn handy at this point-”
“So help me, you’re a patriot, Steve.”
“In a pig’s eye. I know seamanship, and I’d a damn sight rather put in twenty years for the Navy and get a pension than get arthritis and a sprung back hauling fish out of the water. At least that’s how I figure it with my thick head.”
“Well, bless you, my boy. Here’s to Fleet Admiral Maryk, CincPac of 1973.” He sloshed champagne into Maryk’s glass and made him drink it. “How’s your premonition doing, boy?”
“Well, it goes away when I don’t think about it.”
“The little Berkeley girls will fix everything. Let’s shove off.”
Professor Curran, a pudgy man with a pink face and a little soft mouth like a child’s, led the two officers into a reception room alive with twittering coeds. Here and there were gawky boys of bad complexion. The arrival of two battle veterans in blue and gold electrified the air. The girls lost their real nonchalance and assumed false nonchalant attitudes; and there was a violent activity in powder puffs and lipsticks.
The professor’s introduction of Keefer was long and fulsome. This was one of the rising literary stars of America, he told the shining-eyed girls. He mentioned that several of Keefer’s short stories and verses had appeared in the Yale Quarterly and such fine periodicals. He dwelt on his play, The Amaranthine Weed, which the Theatre Guild had held under option for a year. “But,” he added archly, “lest you get the idea that Thomas Keefer is just another writer for the high-brow coterie, let me inform you that he has also sold stories to Esquire and the Ladies’ Home Journal-yes indeed, the very best of the ‘slicks,’ as they are known.” The girls giggled and exchanged knowing looks. It was all news to Maryk, sunk in the comer of a decrepit green couch in the back of the room. Keefer had never talked about his writing. It was unnerving to realize that his shipmate was a real young author of consequence. He was ashamed to think that he had joined in the coarse wardroom jokes about Keefer’s novel.
“And so we are going to have the unexpected pleasure of hearing about the Novel in World War II-not from me-but from a young man who may well write the novel of World War II-Lieutenant Thomas Keefer, of the U.S.S. Caine.”
Keefer acknowledged the loud applause with a charming smile, and began to talk easily. The girls seemed to soak up the speech, but Maryk derived nothing from it but the sad reassurance that his flunking grades in English had been well deserved. In the tangle of names-Kafka, Proust, Hemingway, Stein, Huxley, Crane, Zweig, Mann, Joyce, Wolfe-he recognized only one, Hemingway. He dimly recalled having started to read a twenty-five-cent reprint of a Hemingway novel, attracted by the cover picture of a naked girl sitting up in bed talking to a fully dressed soldier; but the tale had seemed too well written to be a sex story, and he had abandoned it.
Keefer talked for half an hour, leaving Maryk completely baffled and humiliated. Then the girls swirled and frothed around the speaker in a circle four or five deep, while Maryk leaned against the wall and conducted a dry stumbling conversation with a couple of the least good-looking ones, whose interest in him was confined to such information as he could give them about Keefer. Maryk wondered whether this was the fulfillment of his foreboding: an afternoon in which his nose had been rubbed painfully in his own ignorance and stupidity. He wasn’t sure he could ever talk naturally with Keefer again.
After a while the novelist captured two of the prettiest girls, and they went to dinner in a candlelit French restaurant overlooking the bay. Maryk telephoned the ship’s office, a routine check at eight o’clock. He came back to the table gnawing his lips; his eyes were prominent. “They want us back aboard, Tom.”
“What! When?”
“Right now.”
“What’s the dope?”
“I spoke to Jellybelly. He wouldn’t say. Gorton wants us back.”
The girls uttered tiny chirps of dismay. They drove away unhappily in their red Buick convertible, and the officers hailed a cab. Keefer cursed the bad luck and offered wild conjectures about the summons. The first lieutenant sat silent, rubbing his wet palms on his coat sleeves.
In the glare of a yellow floodlight at the foot of the gangplank, Gorton and Harding stood beside a knot of hooded welders crouched over their blue flames on the deck. “What’s the dope?” yelled Keefer, trampling behind Maryk down the gangplank.
“You’d better get on the ball, Mr. Maryk,” said Gorton with a crafty grin. “The exec is supposed to keep the duty officer informed of his whereabouts. I’ve been calling every hotel bar in town for you-”
The first lieutenant screwed up his blunt features. “What are you talking about?”
“You heard me. You’ve got it, Steve,” said Gorton. “Adams and I received our orders this afternoon. You’re the new exec of the Caine.” He took the astounded officer’s hand and shook heartily.
“Me?” stammered Maryk. “Me?”
“It’s happening in the whole squadron, Steve. Over on the Simon a bird who made lieutenant in October has got exec. And their new skipper is a reserve lieutenant. The whole deal is busting wide open. We’ve got a night’s work ahead of us-”
“Did I get orders?” Keefer interrupted eagerly.
“No, and you ain’t ever going to, Tom. This does it. They peeled off Carmody, too. You and Steve will ride her into the boneyard. You’ll be exec in a year.”
Keefer took off his white hat and dashed it to the deck. It bounced, rolled to the side, and disappeared. Gorton leaned over the life lines. “Dear me,” he said, “smack into a puddle of bilge. Looks like the new senior watch officer needs a new hat.”
“God damn the Caine,” said Keefer, “and strike everyone aboard it, including me, with a curse.”
Maryk peered gloomily around at the old ship, as though he were reporting aboard for the first time. “This is it,” he thought-but he could not have said what he meant by “it.”
It was not hard for Mrs. Keith to see that her Willie was not the same lad who had left for Yosemite three days earlier. They were having dinner at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in her suite overlooking the bay. The view was fine, the dinner was excellent, the champagne a rare French vintage; but Willie ignored the view, picked at his dinner, and left the wine sloshing in the bucket of melting ice, except when his mother reminded him to pour.
Mrs. Keith was aware that the Caine had changed Willie. His face was narrower. The innocent curves which she affectionately thought of as baby fat were disappearing, and her own marked cheekbones and square jaw were taking shape in her son’s countenance. His eyes and mouth gave less the impression of his old easy good humor than of fatigue and a certain petulant doggedness. His hair seemed thinner, too. These things Mrs. Keith had noted in the first moments on the pier. But there was a deeper change now, an uneasiness and gloomy abstraction, and the mother had a good idea of what the trouble was. “May Wynn is a remarkably pretty young woman,” she said, breaking a long silence, pouring tea for Willie.
“She sure is.”
“How do things stand between you and her?”
“I think I may marry her, Mother.”
“Oh? Pretty sudden, isn’t it?”
“No. I’ve known her along time.”
“How long?” Mrs. Keith smiled. “You’ve been very cagey about it all, I must say, Willie.”
He told his mother briefly about the romance, and explained that he hadn’t tal
ked to her of it because until recently he hadn’t regarded it seriously.
“But now you do, eh?”
“Obviously, Mother.”
“Well, you underestimated her from the first, Willie. She’s extraordinarily attractive. What’s her background? Do you know her parents?”
Willie admitted everything. He added some sentiments about the equality of all Americans and the need to judge people on their merits rather than their background. He put in a good word for May, in conclusion, by disclosing that she was working her way through college so as to be more worthy of him. Mrs. Keith took the whole revelation calmly, allowing Willie to talk himself out. She lit a cigarette, left the table, and stood at the window, looking out at the bay. Willie had the curious sensation that he had been through such scenes before. He realized that he had felt the same way in childhood, discussing a bad report card with his mother.
“Have you proposed to her?”
“Yes.”
“You proposed out at Yosemite, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I rather thought so.”
“She hasn’t exactly accepted me,” said Willie, stating the fact as though it added to May’s stature. “She said I’d better think about it some more, and tell you.”
Mrs. Keith smiled pityingly over her shoulder at her son and said, “I think she’ll accept you, Willie.”
“I hope she will.”
“Willie-what’s your exact relationship with this girl?”
“That’s a hell of a question, Mother.”
“I think you’ve answered me, Willie.”
“Don’t get any wrong ideas. She isn’t a tramp, and I haven’t been living with her-”
“I’m sure she’s not a tramp-”
“She’s a sweet, good girl, and you’ll just have to take my word for that.”
“Willie, you’re through with your dinner, aren’t you? Come here and sit with me on the sofa. I want to tell you a story.”
She sat close beside him, and took his hand in hers. Willie disliked the touch; it was too intimate, too parental, made him too much the confused child needing guidance, but he lacked the heart to pull his hand away. “Before your father married me,” said Mrs. Keith, “while he was a medical student and an intern, he lived for three years with a nurse. I don’t suppose you know that.”
Willie did remember his father’s short, bleak reference to the nurse, in their one conversation about May, but he said nothing.
“Well, I never met her, but I saw her picture and found out a lot about her. Her name was Katherine Quinlan, and she was a tall, beautiful brunette, with lovely large eyes-a little cow-like, if you’ll forgive my saying it, but lovely-and a gorgeous figure. I knew about her before we married. Your dad told me the whole story. It almost broke up our engagement. I was furiously jealous.” She gave a soft reminiscent sigh. “Well, I took his word that it was all over, and it was. But he too, Willie, at one time, had wanted to marry this girl. It was natural. His father persuaded him not to, simply making your dad face facts about himself. Your dad liked to mingle with the best people, and to live easily and luxuriously, Willie. He used to talk a lot about a Spartan life of research, but it was just a dream with which he amused himself. Had your father married the nurse he would have had his Spartan life, and he would have been sorry for it. That was why he waited to get married until he met me- Give me a cigarette, please.”
She continued, “Any man has a feeling of debt toward a decent girl with whom he has had an affair. Furthermore, he acquires a taste for her. All that is inevitable. The point is, any girl, with half a brain knows these things. And if she really wants a man, and feels that her chances are good, she’ll risk it. It’s the last throw of the dice.”
Willie’s cheeks became red, and he started to speak. His mother rode over him. “Willie dear, this is all a process, natural and inevitable. It’s happened a million times. Anybody can get caught up in it. Only remember, a marriage shouldn’t be based on a bad conscience, or a taste for a girl’s looks, but on similar background and values. If you get married out of a guilty feeling, very well, the guilty feeling passes-to a certain extent-but what else have you got? Now, honestly-do you think you love this girl-or do you feel obligated to her?”
“Both.”
“That means you feel obligated to her. Naturally you’re trying to tell yourself you love her, to make the marriage as palatable as possible. Willie, do you want this night-club singer to bear your children? Do you want the Italian fruit peddlers in the Bronx-I have no doubt they’re decent, good people-but do you want them for your in-laws, coming into your home whenever they choose, being the grandparents of your sons and daughters? Can you picture it?”
“How do I know I’ll ever do better? At least I want this girl. She’s the only one I’ve ever wanted.”
“Willie, you’re twenty-three. Your dad married at thirty. You’ll meet a thousand girls in the next six years.”
“You keep saying I want to marry her because I feel guilty. How do you know what I feel? I love her. She’s beautiful, she’s good-natured, she’s not stupid, I’m sure she’ll make a good wife, and if her background is crude, what of it? I think I’ll be sorry the rest of my life if I let her go-”
“Darling, I broke two engagements before I married your father. Each time, I thought the world had come to an end.”
“What do I need background in a wife for? If I ever come back from this blasted war, what will I be? A piano player-”
“There you’re wrong, and you know you are. Willie, you’re growing up fast. Does show business still appeal to you, really? Aren’t you beginning to realize that there’s more to you than fooling with a piano?”
It was a good blow. In the long watches on the Caine Willie had come nearer and nearer to the decision that at the piano he was an untalented dilettante. What he wanted after the war was a university career, at a quiet, noble school like Princeton, teaching literature, perhaps eventually (this his innermost dream, hardly confided even to himself) writing works of scholarship, or even a novel or two. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s all so far in the future-”
“I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to be a distinguished scholar. And when I’m gone you’ll be wealthy, and independent, and you’ll move in the circle of educators and philosophers-Conant, Hutchins, people like that are your kind-and in the name of truth, Willie, does May fit into that picture? Could she be happy as a faculty wife? Do you see her pouring tea for Dean Wicks or chatting with Dr. Conant?”
He rose, went to the table, and fished the bottle out of the bucket. There was only half a glass of flat wine left. He poured it and drank it off.
“Willie dear, I’m telling you what your dad would have told you. God knows he would have been less crude and tactless. I’m sorry, but I’ve done my best. If I’m all wrong, just ignore me.”
She walked quickly to her purse on a bureau, and touched a handkerchief to her eyes. Willie immediately came and put his arm around her shoulders. “Mother, I’m not angry. I know you’re doing what you think is right. This is one of those tight corners. Somebody’s got to be hurt-”
“So long as it isn’t you, Willie, I don’t care.”
Willie left her side and walked into the bedroom, where he paced between the twin beds and the dresser, noting even as his mind gyrated the spare neatness with which his mother had laid out her slippers and flowered silk night robe, and the silver toilet set he had given her for her fiftieth birthday.
His position was crumbling. It was true that he had proposed to May out of a guilt feeling; true that he suspected her of gambling for marriage by yielding to him; true that he was ashamed of her background; true that he couldn’t picture her as his partner in an academic life. He was not sure that he loved her. The night in Yosemite had clouded his feelings, and spread a murk of doubt and ill will over his whole tie to May. Was he a trapped fool, or an eager lover? There was no doubt whatever that he felt
much more like a trapped fool. His self-respect gave way, and he was overcome with a wave of sickness. He saw in the mirror that he was wretchedly pale. “You pitiful jackass,” he murmured at the mirror, and went back to the sitting room. His mother stood where he had left her. “Look Mother, let’s not talk about it any more.” He dropped into an armchair and put a hand over his eyes. “Nothing’s going to be done tomorrow. Give me a chance to think.”
“Weren’t you planning to get married during this trip to the States, dear?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. We hadn’t made definite plans. I told you she hadn’t even accepted me.”
“She’s very wise. Oh, Willie, wait at least until you come back again. It’s not fair to any girl to tie her up when you’re going back out into the war. Promise me you won’t get married this time. That’s all I ask, and believe me I ask it for your sake.”
“I believe you, Mother. I probably won’t. But I can’t tell you I’ll give her up, because I probably won’t do that, either.”
“I’m satisfied, darling.” She put her hand comfortingly on his shoulder, and walked into the bedroom. Her son remained wilted in the armchair. After a few moments she called to him, while she powdered her nose at the dressing table, “You know what I’d like to do, dear?”
“What?”
“I’d like to have a couple of stiff brandies, and then go see a very funny and silly movie. Do you know whether there’s one playing in town?”
“Sorry, Mother. I’m meeting May a little later.”
“Oh. Well,” she said cheerily, “have you time for a drink with me first?”
“Sure.”
“Where is May staying?”
“At a small hotel near the St. Francis.”
“Oh. Well, maybe you can drop me off at a movie on the way down.”
“Certainly, Mother.” Willie walked to the window, and leaned his forehead on the cool pane, without seeing anything. He had never felt more empty and sick. His mouth rested against the wooden frame of the window. Unthinking, he bit into the wood, made a deep print of teeth in it, and got a mouthful of cracked varnish and dust. He wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, and stared ruefully at the two rows of tooth marks in the wood.
