Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War

by The Winds Of War(Lit)

  And Leslie's proposal is odd. It's not very specific as to time and place. If I wrote him back yes, he might well get on his bicycle again.

  "If he's really that kind of fool, which I doubt very much," Byron said, "you could just let him bicycle away."

  "Then there's Aaron." "He's not your problem. He ought to get out of Italy in any case." "He's very reluctant to go."

  "Well, he survived while we were away.

  'Oh, that's what you think. You should have seen the library and study when I got back. Chaos. And he hadn't written anything in weeks.

  Aaron should have gotten married ages ago. He didn't, and he needs a lot of fussing and petting. He can't even sharpen a pendl properly."

  Byron wondered whether Natalie's irritable garrulity was due to the brandy. She was gesturing broadly, talking breathlessly, and her eyes were wild. "And there's still another complication, you know.

  The biggest.l "What's that?"

  A She stared at him. "Don't you know what it is, Briny? Haven't you any idea? Not the faintest inkling? Come on now. Stop it." He said or rather stammered, because the sudden penetrating sexuality in Natalie Jastrow's glance made him drunk, 'I don't think I do."

  "All right then, I'll tell You. You've done it, you devil, and you know it. You've done what you've wanted to do from the first day you came here. I'm in love with you." She peered at him, her eyes shining and enormous. "Ye gods, what a dumb stunned face. Don't you believe me?)' Very hoarsely he said, "I just hope it's true." He got out of his chair, and went to her. She jumped up and they embraced.

  "Oh God," she said, clinging to him, and she kissed him and kissed him.

  "You have such a Marvelous mouth," she muttered. She thrust her hands in his hair, she caressed his face. "Such a nice smile. Such fine hands. I love to watch your hands. I love the way you move.

  You're so sweet." It was like a hundred daydreams Byron had had, but far more intense and confusing and delicious. She was rubbing against him in c rude sensual delight, almost like a cat. The brown wool dress was scratchy in his hands. The perfume of her hair couldn't be daydreamed, nor the moist warm sweet breath of her mouth. Above all gleamed the inconceivable wonder that all this was happening. They stood embraced by the crackling flames, kissing, saying broken foolish sentences, whispering, laughing, kissing, and kissing again.

  Natalie pulled away. She ran a few steps and faced him, her eyes blazing. "WeE, right.

  all I had to do that or die. I've never felt anything like this in my life, Byron, this maddening pull to you. I've been fighting it off and fighting it off because it's no daum good, you know. You're a boy. I won't have it. Not a Christian. Not again. And besides-"she put both hands over her face. "Oh. Oh! Don't look at me like that, Briny! Go out of my bedroom." Byron turned to go, on legs almost caving under him. He wanted to please her.

  She said in the next breath, "Christ, you're a gentleman. It's one of the unbelievable things about You. Would you rather stay? My darling, MY love, I don't w t put you 0 an to u I want to talk some more, but I want to make some sense, that's all. And I don't want to make any false moves.

  I)II do anything you say. I absolutely adore you." He looked at her standing in the firelight in the long wool dress with her arms crossed, one leg out to a side, one hip thrust out, a typical Natalie Pose. He was dazed with happiness beyond imagining, and flooded with gratitude for being alive. "Listen-would you think of marrying me?"

  Byron said.

  Natalie's eyes popped wide open and her mouth dropped. Byron could not help it; he burst out laughing at the comic change of her face, and that made her laugh crazily too. She came to him, almost flung herself at him laughing so uproariously that she could hardly manage to kiss him. "God in heaven," she gasped, twining him in her arms, "you're incredible. That's two proposals in one day for la Jastrow! It never rains but it pours, eh?"

  "I'm serious," he said. "I don't know why we're laughing. I want to marry you. It's always seemed preposterous, but if you really do love me-"

  "It is preposterous"-Natalie spoke with her lips to his cheek-"preposterous beyond words, but where you're concerned I appear to be quite mindless, and perhaps-well! Nobody can say you're a beardless boy, anyway! Quite sandpapery, aren't you?" She kissed him once more, hard, and loosened her arms. "The first idea was right.

  You leave.

  Goodnight, darling.

  I know you're serious, and I'm terribly touched. One thing we've got in this godforsaken place is time, all the time in the world."

  In the darkness, on his narrow bed in the tiny attic room, Byron lay wide awake. For a while he heard her moving about below, then the house was silent. He could still taste Natalie's lips. His hands smelled of her perfume. Outside in the valley donkeys bee-hawed to each other across the echoing slopes, a misguided rooster hailed a dawn hours away, and dogs barked. There came a rush of wind and a long drumming of rain on the tiles, and after a while water dripped into the pail near his bed, under the worst leak. The rain passed, moonlight shafted faint and blue through the little round window, the pattering in the pail ceased, and still Byron lay with open eyes, trying to believe it, trying to separate his dreams and fantasies of half a year from the real hour when Natalie Jastrow had overwhelmed him with endearments. Now his feverish mind ran on what he must do next. The window was turning violet when he fell asleep in a jumble of ideas and resolves, ranging from medical school and short-story writing to the banking business in Washington. Some distant cousins of his mother did control a bank.

  Hi, Natalie." "Oh, hi there. Sleep well?" It was almost eleven when he hurried into the library. Byron was a hardened slugabed, but he had not come down this late before. Three books lay open on Natalie's desk, and she was typing away. She gave him one ardent glance and went on with her work. Byron found on his desk a mass of first-draft pages heavily scribbled with jastrov/s corrections, to which was clipped a note in red crayon: Let nw have this material at lunch, please.

  'A.J. looked in here ten minutes ago," Natalie said, 'and made vile noises."

  Byron counted the pages. "He's going to make viler ones at lunch.

  I'm sorry, but I didn't close my eyes till dawn."

  "Didn't you?" she said, with a secret little smile. "I slept exceedingly well."

  With a quick shuffling of papers and carbon he began to type, straining his eyes at Jastrow's scrawl. A hand ran through his hair and rested warmly on his neck. "Let's see." She stood over him, looking down at him with affectionate amusement. Pinned on the old brown dress over her left breast was the gold brooch with purple stones from Warsaw. She had never before worn it. She glanced through the pages and took a few.

  "Poor Briny, why couldn't you sleep? Never mind, type your head off, and so Will I."

  They did not finish the work before lunch, but by then, as it turned out, Dr. Jastrow had other things on his mind. At noon, an enormous white Lancia rattled the gravel outside the villa. Byron and Natalie could hear the rich voice of Tom Searle and the warm hard laugh of his wife.

  Celebrated American actors, the Searles had been living off and on for fifteen years in a hilltop villa not far from Jastrow's. The woman painted and gardened, while the man built brick walls and did the cooking. Endlessly they read old plays, new plays, and novels that might become plays.

  Other celebrities came to Siena just to see them. Tlrough them Jastrow had met and entertained Maugham, Berenson, Gertrude Lawrence, and Picasso. A retired college professor would have been a minnow among these big fish; but the success of A Jew's Jesus had put him fairly in their company. He loved being part of the celebrities' group, though he grumbled about the interference with his work. He often drove down to Florence with the Searles to meet their friends, and Natalie and Byron thought the actors might be passing by now to fetch him off. But coming down for lunch, they found A.J. alone in the drawing room, sneezing, red-nosed, and waving an emptied sherry glass.

  He complained that they were late. In fact they were a bit earl
y.

  "The Searles are leaving," he said when lunch was over, having sneezed and blown his nose all through the meal without uttenng a word.

  "Just like that. They came to say good-bye."

  "Oh? Are they doing a new play?" said Natalie.

  "They're getting out. Lock, stock, and barrel. They're moving every stick back to the States."

  "But doesn't their lease run for-how many more years? Five?"

  "Seven. They're abandoning the lease. They can't afford to get stuck here, they say, if the war spreads." Jastrow morosely fingered his beard.

  "That's one difference between leasing and buying. You just walk away.

  You don't bother your head about what happens to the place. I must say they urged me to lease. I should have listened to them. But the purchase rice was so cheap!"

  p Byron said, "Well, sir, if you think there's any danger, your skin comes first."

  "I have no such fears. Neither have they. For them it's a matter of business. We'll have our coffee in the lemon house." With a peevish toss of his head, he lapsed into silence.

  The lemon house, a long glassed-in structure with a dirt floor, full of small potted citrus trees, looked out on a grand panorama of the town and the rounded brown hills. Sheltered here from cold winds that swept up the ravine, the trees throve in the pouring sunlight, and all winter long blossomed and bore fruit. Jastrow believed, contrary to every medical opinion, that the sweet heavy scent of the orange and lemon blooms was good for the asthma that hit him when he was nervous or angry. Possibly because he believed this, it tended to work. His wheezing stopped while they drank their coffee. The warm sun cheered him up. He said, "I predict they'll sneak back in short order with their tails between their legs, and three vans of furniture toiling up the hill. They remind me of the people who used to go fleeing off Martha's Vineyard at the first news of a hurricane. I sat through four hurricanes and thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle." Natalie said after he left, "He's badly shaken."

  "I hope he gets shaken loose from here."

  "Dear, this house will go to rack and ruin if A.J. leaves it."

  "So what?"

  "You've never owned anything, have you, Briny? Or saved any money.

  Once you have, you may understand."

  "Look, Natalie, A.J. had a windfall late in life and got carried away and bought himself a big Italian villa for a song, in a lonesome mountain town. All right. Suppose he walks away now? If he offers it for sale he'll get something for it. Otherwise he can return after the war and put it back in shape. Or he can just forget it, and Ict it fall down. Easy come, easy go."

  "You see things so simply, she said.

  They were sitting side by side on a white wicker couch. He started to put his arm around her. "Stop that," she said, catching her breath and L deflecting his arm. "That's too simple, too. Listen carefully, Byron. FloN, old are you? Are you twenty-five yet? I'm twenty-seven."

  "I'm old enough for you, Natalie."

  "Old enough for what? To sleep with me? Don't talk rubbish. The question is, what are you doing with yourself? I can teach at a university anytime. I've got my M.A. thesis almost finished. What have you got? A smile that drives me mad and a handsome head of hair.

  You ) re brave, you're gentle, but you just drifted here. You only stayed because of me.

  You're killing time and you're trained for nothing."

  "Natalie, how would you like to be married to a banker?"

  "A what? A ha?"

  He told her about his relatives and their bank in Washington.

  Hands folded in her lap, she beamed at him, her face aglow in the sunshine.

  "How does that sound?" he said.

  "Oh, fine," she said. "You're really facing up to life at last.

  A stern, serious business, isn't it? Tell me one thing."

  "What?" "Tell me when you decided you liked me.

  "Don't you want to discuss this bank idea?"

  'Of course, dear. All in good time. When was it?"

  "All right, I'll tell You. When you took off your sunglasses.

  "My sunglasses? When was that?" "Why, that first day, when we came into the villa with Slote. Don't You remember You had big ?

  these dark glasses on in the car, but then you took them off, and I could see your eyes."

  "So?"

  u "But it's so absurd. Like everything else you say and do. What did "You asked me when I fell in love with you. I'm telling you.

  YOu know about me? Anyhow, my eyes must have been totally bloodshot.

  I'd been up four, having till one hellish row with Leslie. You struck me as nothing at all, dear, so i didn't give a damn. Now look, you don't really 'want to be a banker, do you?"

  He said with an abashed grin, "Well, I did think of one other thing.

  But don't laugh at me."

  "I won't."

  "I thought of the Foreign Service. it's interesting and it's serving the country."

  "You and Leslie in the same service," she said. "That would be a ho, one." She took his hand in a maternal way that depressed Byron.

  "This isn't much fun for you, Briny dear, all this serious talk."

  "That's okay," Byron said. "Let's go right on with it."

  For a moment she sat pondering, holding his hand in her lap, as she had in the Swedish ambassador's limousine. "I'd better tell you what I really think. The trouble is you are trained for something.

  You're a naval officer." "That's the one thing I'm not, and that I've made a career of not being."

  "You already have a commission."

  "I'm just a lowly reserve. That's nothing."

  "If the war goes on, you'll be called up. You'll stay in for years. That's what you'll probably be in the end, from sheer inertia, and family custom, and the passing of time."

  "I can resign my reserve commission tomorrow. Shall I?"

  'But suppose we get in the war? What then? Wouldn't you fight?"

  "There's nothing else to do then." She put her hand in his hair, and yanked it. "Yes, that's how your mind works. Well, I love you for that and for other things, but Byron, I'm not going to be the wife of a naval officer. I can't think of a more ridiculous and awful existence for me. I wouldn't marry a test pilot either, or an actor, don't you understand?"

  "It's no issue, I tell you, I'll never be a naval officer-what the devil?

  Now what? Why are you crying?"

  She dashed the sudden tears from her face with the back of her hand, smiling. "Oh, shut up. This is an insane conversation. The more I try to make sense, the wilder it all gets. All I know is that I'm crazy about you. If it's a dead end, who cares? I obviously thrive on dead ends. No, not now, love, really, no-" She gasped the last words as he firmly took her in his arms.

  There was nobody in sight. Beyond the glass there was only the panorama of hills and town, and inside the lemon house silence and the heavy sweet scent of the blossoms. They kissed and kissed, touching and holding and gripping each other. Soon Natalie happened to glance up and there stood the gardener Giuseppe outside the glass, leaning on a wheelbarrow full of cuttings, watching. With a squinting inebriated leer, he wiped a sleeve of his sweater across his knobbed nose, and obscenely winked.

  "Oh, Jesus Christ," she said, yanking angrily at her skirt. The gardener showed sparse foul teeth in a grin and trundled the wheelbarrow away. Byron sat flushed, dazed, and dishevelled, looking after him.

  "Well, there goes our little secret, sweetheart. Kissing and smooching under gsl What's happened to me? This whole thing is a plain brute attraction between two people isolated together too long."

  She leaped to her feet and pulled at his hand. "But I love you.

  I can't help it. I don't want to help it. Oh, that son of a bitch Giuseppe! Come, let's get back to the rock pile. We must."

  Jastrow called from his study as they came into the house, "Natalie, where is your letter? May I read it?"

  "What letter, A.J.? I didn't get any mail."

  "Are you sure? I
have one from your mother. She says she's written you another and much longer one. Come read this. It's important."

  He waved a flimsy airmail sheet as Byron went upstairs.

  There were only half a dozen lines in her mother's neat featureless writing, a Manhattan public school script: Dear Aaron: We would both appreciate it if you would urge Natalie to come home. Louis took that story of her trip to Poland very hard. The doctor even thinks that it may have been the cause of this attack. I've written Natalie all about it. You MaY as well read that letter, there's no sense in my repeating the whole terrible story. In ret"spect, we were very lucky.