Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

by Sloan Wilson

  It had been a week to remember, all right. They had started in a small bar in the basement of a cheap hotel. In the corner there had been a piano painted white, with a thin, bald, blind man playing old American jazz very badly. It had been there he had met Maria. She had come into the bar hesitantly with painfully obvious intention, and every man in the room had glanced up and looked at her, a pretty girl, eighteen years old, in a worn black dress and a coat that had once belonged to a soldier. She had walked over to the bar meekly and ordered a glass of vermouth. She had sat on a stool in front of the bar and had taken off her coat, which had been clumsily retailored to fit her, and she had laid it across her lap while she sipped her vermouth slowly to make it last a long time. Tom had looked at her coldly. Young, with a good figure, and a face which, if it were relaxed, could be beautiful–it might as well be this one as any other. When you’ve only got a week, you can’t look around forever. He had walked over and sat down beside her. “Can I buy you a drink?” he had asked.

  It had been real romantic. She had glanced up at him with a forced smile on her lips. “Thank you,” she had said in a strong Italian accent. Her voice had been soft and timid.

  “Well, I see you’re fixed up,” Hank had said, coming over and leaning on the bar beside Tom. “I’m going to shove on–there’s nothing else around here. Let’s meet here tomorrow morning.”

  “All right,” Tom had said.

  He had sat beside Maria sipping his sweet vermouth, the picture of the grinning little man with the bayonet still in his mind. “You’ll be all right,” Betsy had written him in her last letter. “I’m absolutely sure you’ll come home to me all right.”

  Pretty Betsy, he had thought, as he sat sipping the sweet vermouth. Pretty Betsy, with the pretty shoulders and the soft skin tanned by the summer sun. I will not think of Betsy.

  I have a week, he had thought, seven days and seven nights, the amount of time the world was created in. He had glanced then at Maria, who also had been sitting sipping her vermouth and looking down thoughtfully, and he had seen that she was prettier than he had thought, that her face, when in repose, was still the face of a young girl, and that her body was as beautiful as the body of any woman, and much more beautiful than most.

  “Do you speak English?”

  “A little,” she had replied in her strong accent. “My father spoke English. Sometimes he used to be a guide for tourists.”

  “My name’s Bill Brown,” Tom had said, “William T. Brown from Kansas City, Iowa. What’s your name?”

  She had shrugged. “Maria,” she had said.

  “How about a meal, Maria? Let’s get out of here and get a real dinner! You like champagne?”

  “Yes.”

  They had gone to a big restaurant with white table linen and waiters in dinner coats, as though there had never been a war at all. For an enormous price they had eaten roast chicken and fried potatoes and pastries, and they had had champagne, all right, champagne which the Germans had brought to Rome from France. She had eaten greedily and drunk little. When the meal was over, and the waiter paid, she had quietly asked him to go to her room with her; he hadn’t even had to hint at all. They had got into a taxi and ridden a long way, down dimly lit streets, with the silhouettes of tall buildings ruined by time rather than war black and jagged against the moonlit sky. They had not talked. In the taxi he had kissed her once, finding that her lips were unbelievably soft and that he had forgotten what a kiss was like. The despair, the fury of having to fly to another war, and the cold loneliness that had been sitting in his stomach so many months, through so many battles and the intervals between battles, had left him, and somehow the sense of cheapness and sordidness had gone, and he had felt relaxed and completely happy for the first time in two years, for the first time since he had got aboard the slate-gray troopship which had carried him from New York into the fog of the North Atlantic an endless number of months ago.

  “You are beautiful,” he had said.

  The taxi had stopped in front of a tenement house. An old woman had leaned out a window and watched them with open curiosity. After paying the driver, Tom had followed the girl through a courtyard jammed with debris, into a dark hall. There had been no light. The girl had taken his hand and led him up five winding flights of stairs, littered with cardboard boxes and bottles. Moonlight had streamed through the window at each landing. The pitch-darkness of the stairs between landings had not been like the darkness of a battlefield, an impenetrable wall concealing only danger and death. It had been a protecting darkness, friendly, warm, almost soft and caressing. She had led him to her room, and he had snapped a light switch, but no light had come on, and she had lit a candle, bending over it seriously as the flame from the match in her cupped hands grew, first showing her silhouette, and then her face, with shadows flickering in the candlelight. He had kissed her again, and with the tips of her fingers she had caressed the back of his head, and his neck and his shoulders, very gently, hardly touching him at all, and when the kiss was over, she had smiled, and the look of strain had gone from her face, and it hadn’t been sordid any more. She had taken off her clothes and stood there golden in the candlelight, incredibly beautiful.

  He hadn’t gone to meet Mahoney in the bar in the morning. He had lived with Maria for a week, shunning everyone he knew, and in that week he and Maria had built a small, temporary world for themselves, full of delights and confidences, a completely self-sufficient world, packed with private jokes, and memories, a whole lifetime with silver and golden anniversaries, Christmases and birthdays, fifty years compressed into a week. They had kept no secrets from each other. He had told her his real name. Lying on the bed naked, taking great pleasure in nakedness even when their passion was spent, they had talked endlessly, discussing all troubles, all angers, all fears, and for that week, nothing had seemed very bad any more, even the inevitable prospect of the grinning little man with the bayonet, whom he introduced to her, and whom she acknowledged sadly, as a person she knew well. They had understood each other, the three of them, Tom and Maria and the caricature of the man waiting with a gun.

  At the end of the week, Tom had said good-by to her and reported back to his unit, only to be told that transportation wasn’t available yet and that he could live wherever he wanted as long as he checked in, or at least telephoned headquarters, every morning at eight o’clock. He had returned to her room, and it had been exactly as though he had returned from a long absence, the young husband coming home from the wars: they had both felt that way, they had both experienced all the happiness of a reunion, without the awkwardness which follows long absence.

  He had lived in the room with her, thinking that each day was the last, thinking that tomorrow at eight o’clock the sergeant who answered the telephone would say, “Oh, yes, Captain Rath–we’ve got a plane leaving in two hours. You better get right down here.” He had kept his bags packed, and every morning at seven o’clock he had kissed her and crept out of bed and got himself fully dressed, in case it would be necessary to hurry, and each morning for seven weeks, for forty-nine days in all, the sergeant had said, “Nothing yet, Captain–the colonel asks me to tell you to be sure to check in tomorrow.”

  There had been forty-nine last days, and the greatest pleasure in the world had been to walk back to her room from the restaurant where he made his telephone calls at eight o’clock in the morning, shivering a little in the dampness, and to hear her say delightedly, “Not yet?”

  “Not yet!” he had said forty-nine times and, still shivering from the coldness of early morning, had jumped into the warm bed beside her.

  During those forty-nine last days, they had grown old together, patient of each other’s weaknesses, and they had even acquired old family friends, men in bars who nodded to them and recognized them as a couple who belonged together, old ladies on street corners who addressed Maria as a married woman, respectable as themselves. And in particular, they had acquired one friend, almost an uncle, or perhaps a broth
er, a melancholy man who owned a bakery, where hot coffee was served, a wonderful place to have breakfast. The mans name had been Lapa, Louis Lapa, and he had fought with the Germans against the Americans and, a little later, with the Americans against the Germans, fighting both times well, but without enthusiasm. Finally he had been wounded and had returned to his bakery with his foot in a cast, and when Tom and Maria sat down to have breakfast in his shop, he brought hot rolls and coffee, limping badly and coughing, but always smiling. After the first few days he had often sat down to join them, drinking a cup of coffee himself, of course knowing without being told a great deal about Tom and Maria, knowing that they had just met, and that they would soon part, and feeling sad about this, but also companionable. They had come to know Louis well and on one occasion had even invited him to visit them in their room, and they had had a quiet family evening together, with Louis admiring Maria’s beauty the way a friendly brother or uncle might admire the beauty of a young wife. He had called her the most beautiful girl in Rome and had told Tom he was lucky, and Tom had replied that he was indeed lucky, and he had felt this to be true.

  They had had many friends, other Americans living with Italian girls, and one of them had been Caesar Gardella, who had turned out to be intensely religious, who had tried to get an audience with the Pope, and who told everyone he was going to come back to Rome and marry his girl after the war was over. His girl’s name had been Gina–she was a cousin of Maria’s or some sort of distant relative. Tom and Caesar and Gina and Maria had sat drinking together on several evenings, and it had been almost like a suburban community, with the men all working for the same big corporation. But after seven weeks, the sergeant at headquarters had told Tom he had to hurry, transportation was available–the plane was due to leave in three hours. After hearing that over the telephone, Tom had raced back to Maria’s room, and it had been then she had told him she thought she was pregnant, she wasn’t sure, but she thought she probably was. There had been no recriminations. She had asked nothing, and he had denied nothing. She, knowing he was married, and knowing he was flying to the Pacific to meet his grinning little man with a gun, had assumed he could do nothing much for her and had been surprised and grateful when he borrowed five hundred dollars from his friends and gave it to her, along with a jeepful of canned goods and cigarettes and chewing gum, all of which was worth a great deal.

  “If you are pregnant,” he had said, “will you have the child?”

  “God willing,” she had replied, and he had been glad, absurdly glad that in flying to meet his evil, grinning little man with the bayonet, he was leaving a child behind, even if it were to be a child with no father to care for it; a ragamuffin child dancing in the street for pennies, perhaps, but at least a child, which was better than to die and leave nothing, as though he had never been born.

  But of course he hadn’t been sure about the child; it had been only a possibility. He had been sure about nothing, as he boarded the plane and sat in the hard, uncomfortable bucket seat, waiting to take off for the long flight to the Pacific. How strange to think that he might have a child, never to see, never to hold, but a child just the same! How strange that after all the long months of killing, there would be finally, perhaps, the birth of a child, and that this would be the one thing he had done in the last two years which could conceivably lead to trouble. This, of all he had done, would be the one deed which could lead to a court-martial, and stern disapproving looks on the part of commanding officers, and colonels shaking fingers in his face, and social ostracism at home, if he ever got home, and divorce, and a very bad name, instead of medals.

  How strange, he had thought, as he sat in the plane: what a curious inversion, how to the despair of the chaplains is the inclination of the young soldiers to forget their job of killing and to run off and make love!

  He had started to laugh as the plane took off, and above the roar of the engines Mahoney had shouted, “What the hell is funny?”

  “We’re all nuts!” Tom had said, with a feeling that he had at last discovered the great fundamental truth. “We’re all nuts, every goddamn one of us–we’re all absolutely nuts!”

  “You’re god-damn right!” Mahoney had replied.

  “Ever hear of Karkow?” Caesar Gardella had asked an hour later.

  Tom had heard of it vaguely, a small island not far from the Philippines, a very small island which the British had held for two months against strong Japanese attack at the beginning of the war, but had finally lost. “What about it?” he had replied.

  “I hear,” Caesar had said above the roar of the engines, “I hear they’re going to drop us on it.”

  It was just a rumor, Tom had thought, but at such times the rumors are always right. Karkow! What a curious name for a place to die!

  The plane had stopped at many places, hurrying to refuel, always in a hurry to get to its destination, until finally it had deposited Tom and Mahoney in a transient officers’ camp in Hollandia, New Guinea, where there was nothing to do but lie all day on cots under mosquito netting and wait for the attack on Karkow. Lying there, drinking heavily chlorinated water or warm beer when he could get it, Tom had wondered what he would do if he were not killed at Karkow, or wherever he was going. What did one do when one had a wife in the States and a woman and maybe a child in Italy? Did one simply take one’s choice? After he had been in New Guinea about two weeks, the letters Betsy had written him almost every night had caught up with him. In the first one he opened she had said:

  TOMMY MY DARLING,

  Gosh, what a day this has been! At eight-thirty this morning–eight-thirty, mind you–Dotty Kimble telephoned me and wanted me to play bridge in the afternoon. It seems that Nancy Gorton had promised that she would be her partner in a tournament at the club, and at the last minute Nancy got a telegram that John was getting a week-end pass, so of course she simply took off for South Carolina. That left Dotty without a partner in this tournament which she seemed to think was awfully important–you know how seriously she takes things like that. Well, anyway, I said all right, and guess who we played in the very first game? Lillie Barton and Jessie Willis! You’d die if you saw Jessie now–she’s gained about fifty pounds, and she’s worried to death that she won’t be able to take it off after the baby comes. She’s due next month. Anyway, I thought I’d die when I found we were going to play her and Lillie, because you know what sharks they are. Well, to make a long story short, you would have been proud of me, darling–I won’t even try to be modest. Dotty and I won! We each got a perfectly adorable majolica bowl for a prize. I’ve wrapped mine up and stored it with our wedding presents, and after the war, when we buy our house, I’m going to put it right in the middle of our dining-room table, and every morning you can take an orange out of it and think how smart I am!

  Can’t think of anything more to say now, except I miss you like anything. If I sent all the kisses I’d like to give you, this letter would have to go parcel post!

  I love you forever and forever and forever and forever!

  BETSY

  Her other letters had been much the same. They had contained descriptions of movies she had seen, and dreams of the future, when he would have a job with J. H. Nottingsby, Incorporated, or some firm with a name which would have to sound like that. Along with the easy optimism, the cheerfulness, and long, involved jokes, Betsy had sent him pictures of herself, snapshots of a slender, fresh-faced girl, hearty, healthy, and smiling, a girl he had seen someplace sometime, long ago, a real beauty.

  Perhaps I shall go back to Italy, if I go anywhere at all, he had thought. If I go back to Italy I shall betray one person, but if I go home to Betsy, perhaps I shall betray two. It had been strange to lie on the narrow canvas cot in New Guinea and think of a son, perhaps, the grandson of “The Major,” his own son, the great-grandson of “The Senator,” the likeness of himself, dancing for pennies in the streets of Rome. If he did not go back to Rome, what would happen to such a son? He would go wandering barefoot, b
egging for chew-chew gum, a child without a father, the son of a harlot grown ugly and bitter. That’s my boy, he had thought while lying on the hard canvas cot in New Guinea; that’s my boy. If I get it on Karkow, that will be the only part of me I’ll leave behind.

  He had decided that if he survived the war he would go back to Italy, at least to see how Maria was making out, and he envied Caesar Gardella, who got long letters in Italian from his girl in Rome, and who considered himself formally engaged and talked constantly about getting married after the war. Maria had never written Tom at all. It had been her kind of faithfulness not to write, to allow herself to be forgotten. But apparently Gina had written something to Caesar about her, for Caesar’s attitude toward Tom had changed–he had become reserved and disapproving, and with an edge to his voice, he had for the first time begun to call Tom “Sir.”

  Now in his office at the Schanenhauser Foundation, Tom got up and stared out the window at the city below. He had not thought of Karkow for years. If Karkow had not cauterized his mind, he might not have forgotten Maria so easily, and things might have been different between him and Caesar. How had it started? He had first heard the name Karkow as a rumor, while flying from Europe. After he had lain for weeks in a transient officers’ camp in New Guinea, the rumor had grown until it was substantiated by a colonel who had called Tom and Mahoney and many other officers into his matter-of-fact office, with a matter-of-fact map on the wall, to brief them.

  Karkow was a small, jagged island, with steep rocky cliffs on all but one side. The Japs, like the British before them, had had many guns trained on the gravel beach on that one side, waiting for an invasion, and they had honeycombed the island with tunnels and caves. The island lay in the mouth of a large bay, and it had to be taken–no one had doubted that. The plan for taking it was simple, the colonel had explained in his matter-of-fact way: three thousand paratroopers would be dropped on it.