by Herman Wouk
“You don’t really think that,” Keefer said, looking him straight in the face, and Willie took a swallow of brandy and didn’t answer.
“Nevertheless,” the captain said, “I’ll be everlastingly grateful to you if you’ll say as much to Commodore Wharton.”
“I’ll say it to the commodore.”
After a silence Keefer said, “Why did you stay on board, Willie?”
“Well, Captain, don’t forget, I’d seen the actual damage amidships and you hadn’t. And you were wounded and shocked, and I wasn’t-if things had been the other way around-”
“I would still have jumped.” Keefer threw his head back on the pillows and stared upward. “See Willie, there is one lousy thing about having brains. Makes me worse off than Queeg. He could swallow all his own feeble self-protecting lies because he was a stupid man. But I can analyze. I’m imprisoned forever by the fact that I jumped. It has given me an identity. I can’t forget that fact except by going paranoid like Queeg, and I’m pretty clearheaded. Not much guts, but a lot of brains. The combination is quite possible-in fact maybe there’s a correlation, I don’t know-”
“Captain, pardon me, you’ve been through a hell of a tough time and you’ve lost blood, and nothing you’re saying about yourself makes any sense. You have all the guts anybody needs to-”
“Willie, it was you who left the steel balls on my pillow, wasn’t it?”
Willie looked down at his glass. He had done that one morning after Keefer had rammed a tanker coming alongside and then screamed at the helmsman and put him on report. “I-yes, I did it. I’m sorry, Captain, it was a stupid thing-”
“I want to tell you something, Willie. I feel more sympathy for Queeg than you ever will, unless you get a command. You can’t understand command till you’ve had it. It’s the loneliest, most oppressive job in the whole world. It’s a nightmare, unless you’re an ox. You’re forever teetering along a tiny path of correct decisions and good luck that meanders through an infinite gloom of possible mistakes. At any moment you can commit a hundred manslaughters. An ox like De Vriess doesn’t see that or he doesn’t have the imagination to be bothered by it-and more, he has a dumb ox-like sure-footedness for the right path. Queeg had no brains, but he had nerves and ambition, and it’s no wonder he went ga-ga. I think I’ve managed to do pretty well-until today-haven’t I?”
The tone of appeal made Willie hot with embarrassment. “Of course, Captain-”
“Well, it’s been a struggle. Exec is nothing. It’s command, command-I don’t know, I might still have bulled through if not for that goddamn out-of-nowhere son of a bitch of a Kamikaze-”
Keefer’s voice cracked, and tears spurted out of his eyes. Willie jumped up, averting his face. “Captain, I’ll come back a little later, you’re not well at all-”
“Oh, stick around, Willie. I’m okay. I just feel goddamn bad about being Lord Tom for life-”
Willie reluctantly leaned against the desk, still not looking at the captain. In a moment Keefer said dryly, “It’s okay, I’m all right now. Have another brandy.”
The tears were gone from his face. He held the bottle out to Willie. “Possibly the most humiliating aspect of the whole thing-I’m wondering whether after all my yappings, all these years, there isn’t an occult wisdom in the Navy’s mysterious ways. They put Roland on carriers, and sentenced me to the Caine. And by some diabolical chance we were both faced with the same test, a Kamikaze fire, and Roland died saving his ship, and I jumped-”
“Captain, you’re reading all kinds of meanings into a random accident. Pull yourself together and forget it. If you’re going to see the commodore at 1700 you ought to start getting ready- Arm bother you?” Keefer was grimacing as he sat up.
“Hurts like hell-that’s another thing, I want to go to the Relief-okay, Willie-” The captain swung his legs out of the bunk, moving his arm carefully. “Have another shot before we go?”
“No, thanks, sir-”
Keefer regarded him appraisingly, with a sullen smile. “I wonder if you realize how much you’ve changed in two years on the Caine?”
“I guess we all have, sir-”
“Not like you. Remember when you left that action despatch in your discarded pants for three days?” Willie grinned. “I never told you, but De Vriess and I had quite a talk about you that night. Curiously enough, it was I who said you were a hopeless case. De Vriess said you would be an outstanding officer eventually. I’ll never know how he could tell. You’ve got yourself a medal, Willie, if my recommendation means anything-well. Thanks for letting me weep into your brandy glass. I feel a lot better for it.” He reached for his trousers. “Can I help you dress, Captain?”
“No, thanks, Willie-I’m not helpless-not physically. What are they calling me in the wardroom, Old Swandive?” His eyes glinted, and Willie couldn’t help laughing a little.
“Sir, everyone will have forgotten this thing in a week-including yourself-”
“I’ll remember it on my deathbed, if I die in a bed, or wherever I die. Everybody’s life pivots on one or maybe two moments. I had my moment this morning. Well- My mother didn’t raise her boy to be a soldier. I’m still a hell of a good writer, which is something. Whatever Barney Greenwald thought. He probably would have predicted I’d jump. Guess I jumped in the court-martial, too, though I still think I couldn’t have helped Steve any by- Well. Believe I’ll have a last shot if you won’t.” He closed his belt dexterously with one hand, poured, and drank. “It is a very curious feeling for me,” he said, “to be in a situation at last where words can change nothing. First time in my life, or I’m very much mistaken. Better shave, Willie.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
“Hell, I guess you’ve earned the right to call me Tom again. Even Long Tom-I mean Lord Tom-I believe I am slightly fuzzy as of the moment. Nothing that a little fresh air in the gig won’t fix. Or do we still have a gig? I forget.”
“It looks pretty awful, Captain, but the motor still turns over-”
“Fine.” As Willie put his hand on the doorknob Keefer said, “By the way-” He fumbled in the bookshelf over the desk and pulled out a fat black binder. “Here’s the first twenty chapters of Multitudes. The rest of it is somewhat dampish. Like to look at it while you’re relaxing tonight?”
Willie was astonished. “Why-thanks, sir-I’d love to. I was beginning to think I’d have to buy it to get a look at it-”
“Well, hang you, Willie, I still expect you to buy it, don’t go gypping me on my royalties. Like to know what you think of it, though.”
“I’m sure I’ll like it very much, sir-”
“Well, bring that old comparative-lit mind to bear. And don’t spare my feelings out of military deference.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Willie went out with the binder under his arm, feeling as though he had lain hands on a top-secret document.
Late that night he wrote to May.
CHAPTER 39
A Love Letter
It was long after midnight when Willie closed Keefer’s manuscript, put it aside, and went to the ship’s office. Snapping on the yellow desk lamp, he bolted the door and uncovered the typewriter. There was dead silence in the airless room except for the muffled creaking of fenders between the hull and the side of the Pluto. (The Caine was alongside the tender for repairs.) In the drawer for paper he found some of the yeoman’s tattered pornography, and was amused by the fact that he didn’t feel like stopping to read it. He rolled paper into the machine and wrote in a steady rattle, never pausing.
DEAREST MAY,
If there’s one experience that’s been typical of my life on this ship, one memory I’ll always retain, it’s of being shaken out of my sleep. I guess I’ve been shaken out of my sleep a thousand times in the last two years. Well, I’ve been shaken out of my sleep regarding you, too, at last, and I only hope to God it’s not too late.
I know this letter is going to come as a bombshell to you. Read it, darling, and then decide whether it’
s worth answering. For all I know, I mean no more to you now than any one of the dumb gawking customers at the Grotto. But I must write it.
There’s no point at this late date in apologizing for not writing for five months. You know why I didn’t write. I came to what I then thought was the highly noble conclusion that if I were going to break with you I ought to break clean and not torture you with any more double-talk correspondence. And since I had decided to duck out on you once for all because you weren’t good enough for me-God help me-I didn’t write.
I want you to be my wife. That’s why I’m writing again. I know this beyond any question, it’s the truth forever. I love you. I have never loved anyone, not even my parents, as I do you. I have loved you since the moment you took off your coat in Luigi’s, if you remember, at which instant you were revealed as the most desirable woman-in my eyes, and that’s all that counts for me-on the face of the earth. I subsequently found out that you were brighter than me and also had more character, but these were merely lucky accidents. I would have loved you I think if you had turned out to be a fool. So I guess physical attraction is at the bottom of it, and always will be. Maybe you don’t like that, since you so easily attract droves of morons, but it’s the truth.
The fact is, my sweet darling, that this sex attraction has almost ruined our lives, because in my idiotic, immature, snobbish mind it came to seem a trap. After Yosemite my mother fairly talked me out of marrying you by hitting and hammering the idea that I was in the toils of sex. If you want to know what has changed I can’t tell you. A lot of things have happened to me in the last five months, and the sum total of everything is that I have grown up five years in that time, and can now safely say that I am out of my adolescent fog, however far I am from being a man. I see this much clearly, that you and I are a once-in-a-lifetime miracle. I can’t understand how or why you came to care for me, being stronger, wiser, prettier, possessed of more earning power, and in every way better than I am. Maybe my Princeton chatter helped, in which case thank God for Princeton. I know that the snob idea of marrying into a quote good family-large crimson unquote-can mean nothing to you. Whatever it is, your loving me is fantastic luck.
Sweetheart, this is like the breaking of a dam, I don’t know what to write down first. The main thing is this, will you marry me the next time I come home? Whether the war is still on or whether it’s over? I somehow think it will be over in a few months. If it is, here’s what I want to do. I want to go back to school and get an M.A. and maybe a Ph.D. if the money holds out and then get a college instructor’s job, I don’t care where, but preferably in a small town. About money: it won’t be my mother’s money. Dad, God rest his soul, left me an insurance policy which can see me through two or three years of schooling; and I can work on the side, tutoring or something; and maybe the government will help veterans the way they did in the last war. Anyway, that part can work out. By the way, my dad several times told me I ought to marry you, in an indirect way. He sensed that I’d found something wonderful.
I know I want to teach. As in everything else, you understood me perfectly in this regard. I’ve been exec now on the Caine for a couple of months (Christ, there’s a lot of news I have to tell you-wait a while) and I’ve been running an education program with these Armed Forces Institute courses among the sailors. I can’t describe to you the pleasure I get out of helping the men get started on subjects that interest them, and counseling them in their work, and watching them improve and learn. It feels like the work I’m cut out for. As for the piano playing, how far could I ever get? I have no talent, I can simply play the piano and invent slightly off-color rhymes, a nice parlor trick for Saturday nights. The whole night-club life, those damned customers with their dead floury faces and the stinking air and the same thing night after night after night-the whole stale gummy mess of pseudo-sex, pseudo-music, pseudo-wit-not for me. Not for you. You’re like a diamond on a garbage pile, in those night clubs.
About religion. (First things first-there’s so much to say!) I never have been religious, but I have seen too much of the stars and the sun and people’s lives working out, out here at sea, to go on ignoring God. I attend services when I can. I’m a sort of pale Christian. Catholicism has always scared me, and I don’t understand it. We can talk about it. If you want to bring up the children as Catholics, well, I guess a Christian is a Christian. I would prefer not to be married in a ritual I don’t understand-I’m being as frank with you as is necessary, because the chips are down-but I will do that, too, if that’s what you want. All these things we can talk about, and they will work out, if only you still love me as you did.
A fill-in on news (though I can’t tell you where I am or anything like that, of course). You can see already that I’m not in the brig serving time for mutiny. Maryk was acquitted, mainly by legal trickery, and so my case was dropped. That poor sailor Stilwell went crazy-driven crazy, I guess, by Queeg, whom I now feel as sorry for as I do for Stilwell, they’re both a couple of victims of war, no more and no less. Last I heard Stilwell had pretty well gotten over it after some shock therapy and was on the beach doing some kind of limited duty. Queeg was relieved by a marvelous Academy man who straightened out the ship in four months and then handed it over to Keefer. So we have a novelist for a captain now, quite a privilege.
I now see pretty clearly that the “mutiny” was mostly Keefer’s doing-though I have to take a lot of the blame and so does Maryk-and I see that we were in the wrong. We transferred to Queeg the hatred we should have felt for Hitler and the Japs who tore us off the beach and imprisoned us on a wallowing old ship for years. Our disloyalty made things twice as tough for Queeg and for ourselves; drove him to his worst outrages and made him a complete psychological mess. And then Keefer put the idea of Article 184 into Steve’s head, and the rest of the horror followed. Queeg conned the Caine for fifteen months, which somebody had to do, and none of us could have done. As to the typhoon, I don’t know whether it was best to go north or south, and I never will know. But I don’t think Maryk had to relieve the captain. Either Queeg would have come north by himself when things got bad enough, or Maryk would have done it and Queeg would have strung along after some beefing and there would have been no damned court-martial. And the Caine would have stayed in action instead of holing up in San Francisco during the biggest actions of the war. The idea is, once you get an incompetent ass of a skipper-and it’s a chance of war-there’s nothing to do but serve him as though he were the wisest and the best, cover his mistakes, keep the ship going, and bear up. So I have gone all the way around Robin Hood’s barn to arrive at the old platitudes, which I guess is the process of growing up. I don’t think Keefer feels this way and I don’t know if he ever will. He’s too clever to be wise, if that makes any sense. Very little of what I’m saying is original, I got it from Maryk’s defense counsel, an amazing Jew named Greenwald, a fighter pilot, probably the queerest duck I’ve ever known.
Keefer broke down and showed me some of his novel, finally. I guess you don’t know that he sold the incomplete manuscript to Chapman House and they gave him a thousand dollars’ advance. We had a dinner to celebrate, which turned into quite a horror for reasons which I’ll tell you another time. Anyway, I read some chapters tonight, and I regret to say it looks awfully good to me. It doesn’t seem very original in thought or style-sort of a jumble of Dos Passos and Joyce and Hemingway and Faulkner-but it’s smooth, and some of the scenes are brilliant. It takes place on a carrier, but there are a lot of flashbacks to the beach, with some of the most hair-raising sex scenes I’ve ever read. It’ll sell like hotcakes, I’m sure. The name is Multitudes, Multitudes.
Though what you care about all this I’m sure I don’t know. I just read back over what I’ve written and I guess it’s the most idiotic and disjointed marriage proposal that’s ever been composed. I guess I’m writing a little faster than I can think, but what does that matter? The thinking’s all over so far as my wanting to marry you goes. There’s nothing le
ft but the suspense, and it will be considerable suspense, of waiting to hear from you. Darling, don’t think I’m drunk, or writing on a crazy impulse. This is it. If I live to be 107 years old, and whether you come back to me or not, I will never feel any differently about you. You are the wife that God sent me, and I was simply too fat-brained and childish to recognize you for three years. But I have I hope fifty years to make it up to you, and I just want the chance to do it. What more can I say? Maybe in love letters you’re supposed to rave about the fair lady’s eyes and lips and hair and swear eternal fealty and so forth. Darling, I love you, I love you, I love you, that’s all. You’re all I want, for the rest of my life.
It occurs to me, of course, that life as the wife of a drudge on a college faculty may not appeal to you. There’s nothing I can say to that except that if you love me you’ll come anyway and give it a try. I think you will like it. You don’t know anything but New York and Broadway. There is another world of green grass and quiet and sunshine and pleasant, cultivated people, and I think after a while you will love it. Also you will be a spark of life in that environment-It’s somewhat soporific and unreal, that’s its main drawback-and maybe you will spur me on to do some worth-while work instead of just droning the same drone from year to year. Anyway all this is around the edges. It all comes back to whether you still feel, as I now do, that we belong to each other.
For God’s sake write as soon as you can. Forgive all my stupidity; don’t revenge yourself by taking your time. Are you well? Still wowing the customers and causing pop eyes under all the crew haircuts lined up at the bar? The last time I was in the Grotto I wanted to fight ten guys for the way they were looking at you. Why I didn’t recognize my feelings for what they were I will never know. As for Mother, May, don’t think about her, or if you do, don’t be bitter. I suspect she’ll come around. If she doesn’t she will simply deprive herself of whatever pleasure she might have in seeing us happy together. Nothing she says or does will make any difference. Mother hasn’t had much of a life, despite her money. At this point I’m sorry for her but not sorry enough to give up my wife for her. That’s that.
