"Amerigo really isn't pestilential," Paperman said. "The sun sort of sterilizes all the loose garbage. Everyone's pretty healthy."
"That's reassuring. I see you're still eating. I only had coffee. That proprietor at the Casa is charmingly frank, he said his food is lousy and yours is excellent, so here I am."
"Well, order something quick, dear," said Hazel. "Bob is expecting us in Pitt Bay at nine."
Henny said, "You'd better not eat much before diving. Some dry toast, maybe."
"I discussed that with our frogman friend last night. He said it's a superstition, and I should eat a normal meal." A waitress answered his wave, and Klug ordered cantaloupe, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, pork sausages, toasted English muffins, and Sanka coffee. "Ordinary coffee speeds up my heart," he explained.
"How do you like Casa Encantada?" Norman said.
"Splendid. Thanks for suggesting it. It's wonderfully typical. I'm going to get a New Yorker short story out of it, I know, at the very least."
"Typical of what?" Henny said.
"Any exotic milieu. Homosexuals invariably flock to the periphery of a society. Actually I got insights last night that will feed straight into my thesis. It's a perfect place for me to finish writing it."
Klug ate his breakfast with dispatch, getting more cheerful as the food went down. He didn't like Amerigo, he said, but the scenery was full of interest, and so were the people, natives and whites alike. He was delighted at having come. He even had a kind word for Cohn. "We got into quite a discussion last night, Hazel, after you went off to bed. He's an intelligent fellow."
"You'd been in quite a discussion for an hour. That's why I gave up," Hazel said. "I wanted to dance."
"But it's curious," Klug said. "After you left, his manner changed. You know he likes to pose as an ignoramus, and he keeps up the facade very carefully, but last night after a few drinks he began quoting books. It's a stereotype that he affects, of course, the existential hero that Hemingway popularized, the intellectual confining himself to the vocabulary and reference frame of an inarticulate roughneck. It's all a pastiche of Huckleberry Finn, actually, which is central to the American anti-intellectual ethos-the suspicious dislike of culture and the glorification of pragmatic action, of plain talk, of getting your hands dirty and enjoying danger. It's very chic, but it sits peculiarly on a Jew. Anyway all poses are a little silly. A man should be himself, even if he happens to be an intellectual. Cohn knows his Dostoevsky and Joyce very well, and his range of awareness is wide, and I actually think he could almost teach literature, the way his brother does at Brandeis. This man-of-action stuff is just a pretense."
Henny said, "Well, he does swim in and out of submarines at night, a hundred feet down. Isn't that carrying affectation a bit far?"
Klug beamed. "Men die for a pose all the time. Look at Lawrence of Arabia."
"It's a terrific insight, Sheldon," Norman said, "but you ought to finish up those sausages, you're late."
The Sending said placidly, "I'm ready. I suppose I can phone for a cab."
"I thought I'd drive you out," Norman said.
"Oh? That's very cordial of you."
"I'm coming too," Henny said. "I want to see this."
Lester Atlas was in the lobby, talking to the two bikini girls. Norman went over to him and offered to take him along to Pitt Bay.
"No thanks, Norm, you go ahead and have your fun. I'll mind the store," Atlas rasped. "The senior partner's here, and you can take it easy now. You've earned a little vacation."
One of the girls chirped at Norman, "Does he really own this place, and was he written up in Time?"
"You can believe anything Lester Atlas tells you," Norman said. "Look at that face."
Both girls broke into giggles, and Lester joined with loud haw-haws. "Go on, enjoy yourself, Norm. This hotel is in good hands now. Relax."
2
Whatever its drawbacks, the old Land Rover was fine for crashing past the cactus and thorn trees down the dry stone gully to Pitt Bay. A navy truck was parked at the beach, and near it a fat grizzled man in a wet T-shirt and bathing trunks, and a younger man in green fatigues, lounged on the sand beside upright gray air tanks with dangling straps. "Hello there, Mr. Paperman, remember me? Bob's CO., Lieutenant Woods," called the man in green. "We met the first night you came to this island."
Norman recalled a formidable person in a white dress uniform rain-bowed with battle ribbons. This was a round-faced, bristle-haired, cheery young man. "You're the same one?"
"Same one. Bob's gone out with the fellows. Chief Eller will take your friend out."
The Papermans sat on the sand, listening fascinated as the chief explained the workings of the regulator mask, and showed Klug the functioning of each valve and lever on the tanks. "I've read up on all this," Klug said with a slightly impatient smile, but the chief plodded right on with his memorized recital to the last word. "Any questions?" he said. "What depth will we go to?"
The chief glanced at Klug's large, somewhat fat, pasty white body, with a coating of new pink sunburn on face, chest, and knees- "Forty feet, sir."
"What? I've been down to forty feet in Long Island Sound, Chief, with a face mask. I don't need a lung for forty feet."
"You can get an air embolism in ten feet of water," said the chief. "You'll be breathing compressed air, sir. This is our procedure for a first swim."
"Watch." The Sending ran to the water, dove in, and didn't surface for several minutes. He popped up at a great distance from shore, waved, swam back with beautiful form at high speed, and came out not breathing very hard. "Honest, I can swim," he said.
The chief shrugged at his commanding officer, who reclined on the sand. "That's really impressive, sir," Woods said, "but you'll be using navy equipment, and we're responsible for you. If you rent a tank at the Sea Shop after this, I'm sure Bob Cohn will go down with you to a hundred, a hundred fifty, whatever you want."
"Okay, let's go," Klug said shortly to the chief.
They donned the clumsy gear, waddled into the water, submerged, and were gone.
"I'm scared stiff," Hazel said.
"They're still close by," said the lieutenant. He took from the truck a blown-up black inner tube, and coils of cord. The chief broke to the surface a few feet away, and Woods tossed him the tube. Klug rose out of the water, removing the mask. "Why, it's superb, Hazel," he cried. "You're a fish. You're down there, and you're breathing. It's indescribable. I want you to do this before you go home. It's an existential must."
"Let's see you make me," Hazel said.
The chief now buckled a six-foot length of cord between himself and Klug, who protested loudly, "Really, Chief, I'm all for the buddy system, but won't we be kicking each other in the face?"
The chief paid no attention. He checked Klug's straps and valves and fussed with cords a bit more; then both men vanished beneath the water. The tube began to glide along the surface, out toward Cockroach Rock.
"They're off," Woods said.
Hazel sighed heavily, "Well! That's that." She was wearing a loose cover of chartreuse linen. She now stood and lazily took it off. Norman heard a slight hiss from the lieutenant. Two wisps of yellow were stretched across Hazel's naked pink-and-cream breasts and round hips. She had Henny's tiny waist, her dark hair billowed to her shoulders, and altogether she was ridiculously luscious.
Norman said, "Hazel, what's that you're not wearing?"
"Oh, please, Dad. You should see what some girls wear. This is nothing but a semi-brief."
"Ah! For nuns, and such?"
"Pooh. I want to look for shells. I've got to do something until he comes back, or I'll go nutty." She went off down the beach, Henny with her.
"Are you married," Norman said to the lieutenant, "and do you have daughters?"
"Affirmative. I have three."
"This Bob Cohn, Lieutenant-do you mind talking about him? What do you think of him?"
"Bob?" The lieutenant pushed his crumpled fatigue hat back
up on his head. "He's sort of an individualist, as you might say, but in this outfit we run to those. He's right in there when it comes to the work. Why?"
"Hazel's nineteen, and Cohn's playing up to her. How about that?"
The lieutenant grunted. "Twenty-twenty vision, I'd say." He ran sand through his fingers. "Bob's a funny one. Actually he's kind of a scholar, sir, he reads all the time. His main trouble is, he thinks he's a gambler. It's against regulations and I'm not supposed to know about it, but every payday, from what I understand, the petty officers take him to the cleaners."
"Not a provider," Norman said.
With a laugh, Woods said, "Well, his father has this import-export business, you know. Bob's going back to Israel, once he finishes his navy hitch, to handle it from that end. I think Bob'll provide, all right, if he doesn't blow in the whole business one night playing stud poker."
A red inner tube came skimming toward the shore, and six masked tank-laden figures broke the surface, several of them holding clawing crayfish. Hazel and Henny came hastening back, and Hazel pretended panic when Cohn offered her an enormous mottled langouste still whipping its tail. She caused a real panic among the swimmers. When she ambled off down the beach again to search for shells, she had five muscular assistants, and she was dispensing startled looks and V-shaped smiles on all sides. Cohn dropped on the sand and talked with Henny, Norman, and the lieutenant, glancing to sea every now and then. So half an hour passed.
"How long will they be out?" Henny said edgily. Norman had told her about the sharks around Pitt Bay. She had little use for the Sending but she wished him no harm.
Woods said, "The chief can stretch his air to an hour and a half, but a beginner usually gulps it in thirty or forty minutes. They should be showing up soon."
"How do you tell when you're out of air?" Norman said. "You don't start to drown."
The lieutenant smiled. "Hardly. You get a very clear mechanical warning. As soon as the tank-"
"There's the chief, sir," Cohn said. "By himself." His tone was a shade too easy.
"Yep. All right, Bob. Suppose you get on out there? I'll come with a couple of the fellows." The lieutenant slipped out of his green shirt and trousers, disclosing short khaki trunks and a knife on a belt. He took an air tank and flippers from the truck as he spoke, moving without seeming haste but getting everything done remarkably fast. He shouted "Hey!" down the beach and Hazel's five escorts left her at a trot.
"Is there anything wrong? Was the chief making a distress signal?" Norman said. Cohn was already in the water in mask and flippers, speeding out to Cockroach Rock with scarcely a splash.
"Probably nothing," the lieutenant said, strapping on the tank. "Fisher, Davis, there's two full tanks on the truck. Chief's gotten separated from his buddy, looks like. He surfaced, and then went down after him."
"Yes, sir."
The lieutenant waddled to the water, and submerged, followed in less than a minute by the other two men. The remaining three stood at the water's edge, hands on their hips, looking out toward the reef.
Hazel, when she came up, was unable to talk. She looked at her parents with eyes dilated, for once, in true alarm.
Nobody spoke for what seemed a very long time.
"There's the chief," said one of the men, waving.
Another, a very tall, lean boy with a shaved head, said, "And there's Bob." A pause. "Bob's bringing the fellow in."
"What is it?" Hazel said. "Why is he bringing him in? I can't see anything. Is something wrong?"
The boy with the shaved head glanced at Hazel and smiled. "Why, miss, your friend probably got tired, is all. That often happens the first time. You keep losing body heat and you're not aware of exerting yourself, but then all of a sudden-"
Another man said, "I think he's out." He dived into the water, heading toward Cohn, whom the Papermans could see now, bobbing shoreward.
When Cohn reached shallow water the other swimmers helped him bring Klug to the beach. Klug's tank and mask were gone, his reddish hair hung over his face, and his head rolled.
"My God," Henny muttered. Hazel clutched Paperman's arm.
The men put Klug face down on the sand, his head turned to one side. The shaven-headed boy straddled him and began pressing rhythmically on his ribs. Klug's eyes were closed; a little water ran from his mouth.
Cohn panted to Hazel, "He unbuckled himself from the chief and wandered off."
The lieutenant and the other swimmers came out of the water. Without taking off his tank or fins, Woods knelt beside Klug, and pulled up his eyelid; nodded, and glanced up at the Papermans. "I'm sure he'll come out of it."
"He slipped away," the chief said. "I turned around and there was the empty cord."
"Where'd you find him?" said Woods.
"Hung up on the reef at sixty-five feet. I guess he caught an air tube on the coral. His mask was off."
The lieutenant said to Paperman, "When he comes to, we'll want to take him to the hospital. Just for a routine checkup. I can make better time in your Rover, if you don't mind coming back with the boys in the truck."
"Of course. Anything," Paperman said.
Cohn said, "His lids moved."
"Right. See if he'll breathe," said the lieutenant.
The man on Klug's back ceased pushing. After a moment Klug took a gasping noisy breath, and another. He moved his arms and legs, and opened his eyes. "What?" he murmured. "What did you say?"
"Get off him," said the lieutenant.
The swimmer obeyed. Klug stirred restlessly, rolled over, and sat up with two men holding his elbows.
"Easy," Woods said to him.
"I'm all right," Klug said, hoarsely and thickly. "Did I pass out? I'm okay. There was this big fish I was following and-" He looked around, comprehension brightening in his eyes. "Did they have to pull me out? What a nuisance."
One of the men was holding a small flask of brandy. "Here, sir. Just take a swallow."
Klug's recovery was surprisingly quick. He stood up almost at once, wavering only a little, and objected strongly when Woods told him he was going to the hospital.
"But I'm fine. Really I am-I want to finish that swim-honestly, this is completely unnecessary."
As he spoke, the men propelled him to the Rover, supporting him on either side. He climbed in still arguing. "Hazel, why don't you-" he said, poking his head through the window, and then the Rover shot away in a spray of sand and a grinding roar.
3
After driving the rest of the UDT men to the submarine base, Cohn took the Papermans back to the Gull Reef landing. Hazel wanted to get off at the hospital, but he wouldn't stop.
"You can't see him yet, Hazel, I'm sure. My C.O.'s still with him. He's going to have to file a report. I'll go and get the dope, and then I'll come straight back to the hotel, I promise. Your friend's all right, I know that. I'll bring the Rover, Norm."
"Will your commanding officer be in trouble?" Norman said.
"Nothing he can't handle."
"It wasn't his fault in the least," said Henny. "Sheldon did his best to knock himself off."
"Everything is always the commanding officer's fault," Cohn said. "I'll be right back."
By the time they changed their clothes and came down for lunch, Cohn was waiting for them on the dining terrace, dressed in his fatigue uniform. "They've got him in an oxygen tent, but that's routine. He's fine, the CO. says. He could walk out now. In fact he's full of fight and hollering to get out of there. But it may take a little while. How about a drink all around to quiet our shattered nerves?"
"Why can't Sheldon get out if he's all right?" Hazel said.
"Well, you see, Hazel, there's always the remote possibility of brain damage in a water accident, when the man's been out cold. Your friend revived much too fast for that. But this hospital's very fussy, that's the problem. They let a tourist go last year after an incident like this, and then he sued them for neglect. Claimed he developed headaches and whatnot. The chief of the hos
pital says he's not discharging Klug until he's absolutely satisfied there's no brain damage."
"Holy smoke," said Norman, "the boy is in for life."
Henny said, "Goodness, yes. Any time he opens his mouth he'll get in deeper."
"Oh, stop, Mom," Hazel said.
"I mean it, dear. These people are bound to take his ordinary conversation for wild ravings. Why, I do myself."
"Really, Hazel," Norman said, "can you imagine when the doctor asks him what he's doing these days, and he says he's writing a book to prove that Balzac was a fairy? They'll put him in solitary."
Herman Wouk - Don't Stop The Carnival Page 37
