Point of No Return
Page 21
He could never go back to being the boy he was, the cheerful boy, getting ahead slowly and pleased with any small success. I’ve had everything, he thought, I am somebody now. I can’t, I can’t. Maybe that was why he didn’t make close friends with more men. He could tell whether they were people like him, or better off than he. He didn’t want the ones like him; he didn’t want to be pushed back into what he came from. And the others, the ones you knew were brought up in wealthy homes and had everything their own way, well, you thought it might not work out just right. You didn’t feel too sure. So in the end, he belonged nowhere; he wouldn’t be any worse off in a foreign country.
Just about the only friend he had now was Levy. That seemed a funny idea, on the face of it, but he’d been with Levy as much as with anyone and though they never really talked, Levy always seemed to know what was going on. Levy didn’t ask questions or put in wise remarks but he would bet Levy knew about Dotty and understood about Bill. He’d like to see Levy again, after the war, and talk over the old days. He knew Levy wouldn’t change, when he got out of uniform, and turn into some sort of show-off punk. Levy would be the same dose-mouthed decent guy, all his life.
Then Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought: that’s all I’d need in La Harpe; meet my old war buddy, Jacob Levy. He could just see Mary Jane Cotterell and Elise Rathbone and Mrs. Merrill and that old snake-tongue Mrs. Buckley. Well, where had they been when Levy was at the war: driving their cars around La Harpe, visiting and gossiping, the same as always. Levy was a damn sight better American than they were. But he felt a little chilled, a little frightened; they’d laugh about it among themselves; Johnny Smithers brought a war friend home with him, name of Jacob Levy.…
Money, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, that’s all the hell it is. I’ll get money if it kills me.
He looked at the distant mountains and they came nearer and they were the declaration of peace. And he thought, I ought to be blind happy it’s almost over. He turned back longingly to the safety and the pride and the grandeur of Lieutenant Colonel Smithers, and he felt cold and sick as he imagined La Harpe and people saying to him with friendliness, “Hello, Johnny, good to see you home.”
Jacob Levy had taken off his hot, unnecessary steel helmet and the pleasant spring wind lifted his hair. This was a marvelous feeling, the feeling of a free man who was through with helmets. Good comfortable sweat stuck his shirt to his back and he held the wheel with easy hands and forgot the Colonel and the convoy and Germany and the war. He was repeating the same stories and the same plans. He smiled as if Kathe were already here beside him and any minute he could lean close and put his arm around her.
The great mountains ahead were beautiful, but he was loyal to the Smokies. The mountains also meant the end of the war to him, and he looked at them with love, for when they reached them his life which had never started would start at last. As soon as the war was over he would send Kathe the letter. It was written and in his pocket. Sergeant Postalozzi wouldn’t have wanted his dictionary anymore and if he ever saw the Sarge he would pay for the dictionary and explain why he needed to take it. He could not send the letter before the end of the war, because he had to be sure. But in his heart he was sure; he had come through things he never hoped to come through, and the Colonel and his luck were always there.
He had worked hard on the letter. His system had been to write it first in English and then look up the words in the dictionary, but his English letter was too complicated, so finally he made it short and direct: Cherie petite Kathe; Voulez vous epouser moi? Je revenir quand possible. Attendez pour moi. Je vous aime. He signed it Jawn, since that was the way Kathe said it. He had to sign it something, it wasn’t really wrong to sign it Jawn, it was more like a nickname. Kathe could call him Jawn all their lives if she wanted to, it was only a nickname.
He had puzzled how to get this letter to her and then he thought of Dotty. The Red Cross girls would get mail just like anyone in the army, and he could ask the Colonel, as soon as the war was over, for Dotty’s address and he would enclose the letter to Kathe. Dotty would do this for him; even if she had left Luxembourg she could send the letter to the club there and ask one of the other girls to handle it. The Red Cross girls were supposed to do things like that for soldiers. So Kathe would know and she would wait.
He did not try to guess how long they would stay in Europe before they were shipped home but he knew the Colonel would give him a few days leave to go to Luxembourg City. The Colonel and he were friends now, they’d been together a long time, and he’d say how he wanted to marry Kathe and the Colonel would let him go. Then they’d get married in Luxembourg City because once you were married to a girl the army couldn’t laugh it off. He imagined they’d go home on a troop ship the way they came but that was allright because Kathe would be his wife and an American and as soon as he got home he’d ask Poppa for the money and bring her over and go to New York himself to meet her.
Then they’d visit in St. Louis so Momma and Poppa could see her, but while he’d been waiting for Kathe to come, he’d already have got their piece of land by the stream, and he’d already have started building their shack. If it was good weather when Kathe landed, she could come and camp with him while he was finishing it; otherwise she could stay with Momma until he had a warm place fixed for her. And then they would live together in their own house.
Jacob Levy did not feel it was reckless to hope and plan this way. They hadn’t killed him and he knew now that he would never get killed. He almost ought to be grateful to this war, for Kathe. And he would tell her he was a Jew and she would not mind, because he loved her so much. Where they were going to live it would not matter about being a Jew. There would be no one but Kathe and him, alone, with the clear, fast stream and the peaceful days, and their home to build, and their life. No one would envy them or hurt them; they would be happy.
It seemed to Jacob Levy that his whole life had been shadowy and pointless and always waiting for something bad to happen. Ever since the war began, he had been waiting for the worst, which was to die. And before that he had waited, in resignation, for the careless insults and the injustices that he inherited simply because of being born. But that was finished: Kathe stood between him and all pain. I’m alive, he thought, and from here on out, I’m going to have the finest life there is. He looked at the mountains with longing, for every mile brought him nearer to the beautiful future. It was only a question of days now, and the future would begin.
21
Jacob Levy had driven the jeep into a street like a grey canyon; high heavy apartment buildings rose on both sides. It was all stone, cold looking even in the spring sun. But it was in wonderful condition; behind the front walls there were still rooms and floors. Unlike the center of Munich, you could live here without expecting it to fall on you.
The Battalion was to take over this street.
“I got a hunch,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said, “we won’t be moving for a while.”
The street was full of trucks, for Captain Huebsch’s Company had already arrived. More trucks rumbled in, the street was not blocked but moving solidly with transport, with men. Signs went up on the outsides of the apartment buildings, wires were strung, the efficient apparently chaotic business of settling in had started.
“I’ll take that one,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said. There was no difference he could see between any of these hunks of grey cement.
He entered the musty hallway of the apartment building, and with Sergeant Hancock forced open the door of a first floor flat. They found a middle-class home: stiff matched furniture and hard uncomfortable chairs, all arranged like a doctor’s waiting room; family photographs; vases holding dried grasses and gilded cattails; bookcases with locked glass doors and imposing leather-bound books; and scenic views in oils. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers had seen so many of these by now that he felt as if he were constantly returning to the same drab hotel room. There would be nothing a body could sit on, with pleasu
re.
“Major Hardcastle and I’ll keep this one. I’ll check the others.”
The other apartments were so similar they might have been owned by the same family or furnished by the same furniture dealer.
“Set up the officers’ mess on the second floor here, all Battalion officers,” he instructed Sergeant Hancock. “I’ll have my office on the first floor, for the telephone. Use the rest of the place as billets for the Battalion staff. Put Headquarters Company next door.”
He went downstairs to find Major Hardcastle experimenting with a radio in the living room of their quarters. Major Hardcastle turned a dial and they heard American jazz.
“The AFN,” Major Hardcastle said. “It’s nice to have a radio that operates. How about the bathroom?” But that was too much to expect; the water did not run.
“I don’t guess the water works anywhere,” Major Hardcastle said. “We’ll have a bad situation in this block, with the cans not working.”
They went out to reconnoitre behind the apartment buildings and Lieutenant Colonel Smithers gave orders for latrines to be dug in all the back yards. “Got to get a good water point,” he said.
“You act like we’re going to stay here, Colonel.”
“I got a hunch,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for a bath.” He had not had a bath since March in Major Havemeyer’s apartment in Luxembourg, and it was now the beginning of May.
“Water and a shower unit,” he said to Major Hardcastle.
He went into the apartment he had chosen, picked out the least painful of the chairs, found another for his feet, and sat down. He knew they would find him when they wanted to ask questions. There was the sign on the front door, which showed where he was. I can’t get worked up anymore, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, it’s all over.
Washing hung from twisted iron balconies at all the windows. The Battalion was cleaning up. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers had issued a general order to get the scum off everything. Men were standing in line at the mobile showers, scrubbing clothes in buckets and helmets, washing jeeps and trucks, cleaning rifles. The street was full of sun and the concentrated and not unjoyful effort of the soldiers to wash away five weeks of Germany. It was a nice day. It only lacked the voices of women, calling the things they did when they were cleaning a house. It did not lack children; tow-headed little Germans had wandered in to stare, to fraternize, to beg for chocolate. The soldiers made the children welcome. It was a perfect day for peace to come.
It came, in the most unspectacular manner, after lunch over the radio.
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers was in his office; Jacob Levy had just asked whether he could take the jeep back to the Service Company because there was something wrong with the steering gear.
Peace was announced with not nearly as much excitement as goes into the advertising of breakfast food or hand lotion.
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers and Jacob Levy stared at each other.
“Did I hear right?” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said softly.
They waited, not speaking. Peace was announced again.
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers and Jacob Levy laughed and shook hands and laughed some more and did not know what to do. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers went to the open first floor window and called to some soldiers in the street, “The krauts surrendered! Declaration of Peace!” The soldiers looked stunned. No one seemed to know how to take it. Some laughed and shook hands; realists talked of Japan and said it was too early to get excited; and others, suddenly seeing what the war had been because it was now ended, cursed without purpose, since they could find no other words to explain their feelings. By now the news had been shouted to the other apartment buildings and soon men were leaning from every window, whistling and cheering. The realists and the ones who felt cheated and baffled went away from the street so they could think of the peace, alone. The jovial fellows at the windows threw their caps down and then they threw toilet paper and shredded newspaper in imitation of the New York paper storms they had seen in newsreels. Someone thought more noise would be better and started it off by throwing his helmet, which made a fine clanking sound, and followed this with a flower vase and a china tea-pot. This idea met with general approval and now men were throwing down anything that would break or rattle. A soldier decided this was still inadequate so he fired his rifle. Major Hardcastle rushed out of his office and arrested him, and presently the street became quiet again. Sergeant Hancock detailed men to sweep it up.
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers had shut his window. He felt an enormous relief, that he had never guessed he would feel, a great slow weight-lifted relief; and he felt tired.
“I guess we won, Levy,” he said.
Jacob Levy could not look at the Colonel because his eyes were full of tears. He couldn’t help it. This long hopeless journey was over, and he was alive. There were a lot of people alive. It had stopped in time. The world was going to be decent and people were going to live. The worst thing there could be, ever, anywhere, was over. This was the future; it had finally arrived, and from now on everyone had the chance of being happy. Well for Christ’s sake if you’re going to bawl, he thought, clear out of here.
“I’ll get going, sir,” Jacob Levy muttered.
Lieutenant Colonel Smithers had seen the shine in Levy’s eyes and heard the hoarseness of Levy’s voice. It made him feel ashamed to see Levy taking the peace like this, ashamed of his own doubts and dreads. There must be millions of guys like Levy, trying not to cry for happiness, guys aching sick crazy to get home.
The Battalion officers were celebrating the victory in the second floor mess and the sound of the celebration could be heard in the street. They had listened, on the radio, to accounts of celebrations happening in Paris and London and they meant theirs to be a good one too for they had certainly earned it. They brought whatever liquor they owned or could buy during the afternoon, to this rigid dining room, and all were drinking freely from their pooled resources. It sounded fine; it sounded lighthearted and triumphant the way you ought to be, at the victorious end of such a war. Yet there was something wrong with it. They had got drunk too fast and too intently; they were making almost too much noise. The noise covered a silence. For, out of those who started, only eight remained. No matter how they laughed and smashed glasses and took ringing pot shots at the chandelier with salt cellars and table napkins, no one could forget this. The party ended early, dwindling off into quietness.
Jacob Levy had just mailed his letter to Miss Dorothy Brock, with the letter enclosed for Miss Kathe Limpert. The soldiers were celebrating as and where and with whatever they could, due to the regulation which forbids liquor to be rationed to enlisted men. This forced them to acquire, at rare prices, the drink called everywhere in Europe cognac. Bert Hammer had heard of a hole in the rubble where a kraut sold cognac and they directed themselves to this place. They planned to get very drunk; no one was likely to celebrate a peace twice.
The hole in the rubble had once been a bakery. You entered through a blasted door and scrunched over the splintered and plaster-strewn floor and found a back room, airless, smoky, and full of soldiers drinking cognac from any sort of container.
Bert Hammer was excited and happy. “We ought to get up a snake dance or a torchlight parade,” he said.
Jacob Levy agreed to this, but he was not interested. His own happiness was too private to share.
“I guess that’s where you get a drink,” Bert Hammer said.
They pushed through the crowded soldiers towards a door at the other end of the room. In front of this door, the proprietor had set up a bar which was a chipped mahogany sideboard from some wrecked dining room. The proprietor, a round-shouldered, glum, elderly man, wearing a cloth cap, came through the door and gave Jacob Levy and Bert Hammer two handleless white china cups. Inside these cups was a thick liquid looking like cough syrup.
Bert Hammer began to drink his cognac in short revolted swallows. With half a drink down, he
was ready to consider this room. He still wanted to organize some form of celebration, like New Year’s Eve or the Fourth of July, he thought, trying to find a suitable model. But the soldiers here did not look promising. A lot of them were drunk already, only they were not celebrating-drunk; they slumped against the walls or at the few rickety tables, in silence. Maybe the cognac was poison so it worked on them like that. If the stuff didn’t make you sick right off, you could always be sure you’d wake up the next day with a pain like a corkscrew in your gut. The soldiers who were not drunk were talking loudly but not as Bert Hammer had imagined they would. If you could believe it, they were talking about the war, remembering this river, that town, a roadblock, a minefield. It seemed a pretty poor way to greet the peace.
Two soldiers edged in beside them and hammered with their fists on the sideboard.
“Kraut!” one of them shouted. “Move your fat ass out here and bring some cognac.”
“I’d just as soon shoot him as pay him,” the other said.
Jacob Levy recognized, on their sleeves, the patch of the 12th Division.
“Hey,” he said, “we sort of lost you guys. Where you been?”
The two men turned. Bert Hammer noticed they had trouble focussing their eyes. This cognac must be the worst and quickest kind of poison.