Point of No Return

by Gellhorn, Martha;

  “Major Hardcastle sent them to the Companies, sir,” Sergeant Hancock said, into the silence. He didn’t know whether he was meant to stay or go. The Colonel was in a bitch of a temper these days.

  “Right.”

  “Your new driver’s here, sir.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Smithers looked at the letter on the desk.

  “Is he?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Show him what to do and don’t bother me again.”

  Sergeant Hancock closed the door quietly. He told the thin freckled boy from Texas, who was the new driver, that there’d been some trouble with the Colonel’s old driver, and the Colonel was pretty attached to him and just to take it easy for a while, if the Colonel acted mean. The freckled boy from Texas thought he wouldn’t have to put up with mean or otherwise Colonels for very long; he’d be going home soon, they all would, this war was over.

  Lieutenant Colonel Smithers got out the gin bottle again. He tipped his head back to drink. Here’s to nothing, he thought, here’s to what we all got, nothing, nothing, nothing.

  25

  Now in the dark, after they had all gone, he could rest. They were good to him; he had not expected them to be good to him. When he found he was in a prison hospital, he did not think they would ask if he felt better, and bring him magazines and cigarettes and handle his body with care. He was surprised that there was a Major who was going to be his lawyer, and he was surprised that the Major was interested and wanted to get him off. The Major was a nice fellow; the doctor was a fine man; the nurse was kind too. He asked nothing and he was grateful for what they gave him. But at night, when it was dark, he could rest.

  He felt the pain in his head as something edged and sharp, yet always pressing like a clamped vise over his eyes. This made it harder to think but after he had been alone a while, he would try again. He was thinking, he knew, for no one but himself: there was no purpose in it. It was only for himself.

  The Major said the prisoners were not Jews, or anyhow not all of them were Jews. Last night and the night before, this had confused him. It was allright now. The others who were not Jews had been brought down to being equal with the Jews; they lived and died as the Jews did. It was one case where men were the same. Now he was glad he had done it for the others too. He was glad he had been able to stop the laughing, once, for everyone.

  I couldn’t have done otherwise, he told himself gravely. He knew that too and he was not going to lie about it to anyone. He was not going to abandon the people. He had joined himself to his race and to all those who were destroyed as his own were. If I’d gone to college, he thought, maybe I could have figured out some bigger way.

  But three Germans, who had laughed a mile from that merciless death, would not laugh again. It was all I could do, he thought; he could not have allowed them to go on, insulting the dead.

  It would be necessary to write home. He would do that too, later, when his head did not bother him at all. Major Jarvis said he would get a picture of the gas chamber and the ovens and the dead people outside. He would send that picture to Poppa, so Poppa would understand. He was sorry for Poppa and Momma and he knew he had brought them terrible sadness. It would break his mother’s heart when the army executed him. Then he stopped thinking about this: he accepted the knowledge of his death, but he did not want to think about it.

  He thought the war was a good thing and he would write and tell Poppa so. They did not make the war because of Dachau; if they had, he would certainly have heard about Dachau long ago. But in the end, they reached it. And the S.S. guards were there, piled up dead in a mound; and their dogs were dead. So the war was a good thing. He did not want to think about the war either, because then he had to remember he had done nothing in it. Only that one German, only one or maybe two handgrenades. And then too he had to remember how he hated the war and how he feared being hit and how he did not believe it was any of his business.

  I will have time, he promised himself, I will have time to think of everything and fix it all up so I understand it.

  He wanted to look out the window. He raised his head slowly; it felt big and heavy and burning. Then he sat on the edge of his cot and waited for all the jangling pains to subside so that, from his head down through his chest and arms, what was broken and cut would become one steady pain which he could manage. He stood up, again slowly, and walked across the cold floor in his bare feet.

  He had also never known before how fine a window could be. The night sky was soft and clean with stars. The air was the air of spring, even if it came from a crumbling, foul-smelling city. He did not look down on the buildings and the street. He watched the sky with pleasure and held on to the bars for support. The bars did not frighten him anymore, he was used to them and they made it easier to stand.

  This was the last thing he had to think about and this was not to be answered, never to be answered. He had to do what he had done, but he was two people and he had acted alone. The other one would have to pay too, without being asked whether the price was too heavy. What will happen to her, he thought. He could not imagine her alone, without him, anymore than he could imagine himself without her. This was where his heart failed him. He had believed in happiness, he had taken another person’s life for himself, he had offered happiness because he was so sure. It was the only great mistake he had made.

  “Kathe,” he said, leaning against the bars, “Oh Kathe.”

  The nurse had left two sleeping tablets on the chair by his bed, with the water. The sleeping tablets were for later, when the night became long and lonely and hard. He walked back carefully and swallowed the tablets and lowered himself on to the cot. It is allright, Jacob Levy told himself in the night, I only have to wait.

  26

  Sergeant Hancock knocked but did not open the door until he heard Lieutenant Colonel Smithers say “Come in,” the second time. He was taking no chances. He had been chewed enough in three weeks to last a lifetime. When he told Louie Black he wanted to transfer out of this Battalion or anyhow away from this goddam Headquarters, Louie said it was because the Colonel didn’t have Lieutenant Gaylord around to keep him reasonable. Plenty of other guys had lost their friends. The way Sergeant Hancock doped it, peace didn’t agree with the Colonel.

  “What is it, Sergeant?”

  “There’s a lady to see you, sir.”

  Another kraut, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, another blatting kraut woman who would claim his men had stolen something or raped her or owed her money. This new policeman’s job gave him a pain. There was no other way to describe it: they had become cops. Guard military installations, process prisoners of war, patrol by motor, enforce military government regulations, act like a conquering army and occupy the joint. He would have to see the woman.

  “Send her in.”

  When Sergeant Hancock left he remembered he should have asked for the interpreter too, but Hancock, though not the man Postalozzi used to be, ought to think of that by himself.

  He was frowning over a sheaf of papers which assigned extra duties, changed old orders and generally ruined his working arrangements, when a voice said, “Johnny darling!”

  He stood up, his face stiff with surprise, and she ran across the room and flung her arms around his neck. He remembered the smell of her hair, or maybe it was her perfume. He remembered it with sorrow because this babbling embrace, this display of intimacy, was as impersonal as a handshake. She would never need to tell him. He got it. The sum of darling-it’s-too-thrilling-darling-isn’t-it-lucky-darling-isn’t-this-heavenly added up to goodbye. They all said, we’re through, we’re noisy strangers.

  Dorothy Brock stepped back from his arms which had made no attempt to hold her, and he was startled by her appearance. She looked as spotless and well-pressed as ever. She wore her uniform like a perfectly cut suit she had chosen for herself. Those Red Cross caps were the only pretty ones for women. She had on white gloves too. Her hair had been permanented, no doubt in some WAC beauty shop, an
d these curls did not specially become her. But it was the thinness of her face, the lines from her nose to her mouth, and a hot restless shine in her eyes, that had changed her. She looked sick. If he didn’t know her, and if besides he hadn’t been in a position to check her breath, he’d think she was drunk or suffering a hangover after long drunkenness. It was none of this. It was something else, caused by something he could not see.

  “How’d you get here, Dotty?”

  “From Wiesbaden, darling.” This reminded her of the man still standing in the door, who had refrained from entering and interrupting a reunion of old war buddies.

  “Johnny, this is Captain Lane. Colonel Smithers. Tommy brought me. It’s really too wild these days. I haven’t got orders or a thing. We’re all just sailing off, anywhere we can go.”

  The airforce captain shook hands and did not trouble to smile. So he was the new one; useful fellow, he had an airplane. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers knew the signs well: a certain stuffiness, a melting eye, small gestures to establish ownership. Okay Lane, he thought, she’s all yours, take her away.

  “Sit down, won’t you? Have you got some time?”

  “Darling! Of course. Aren’t you surprised? I’d no idea you were here. We only got in this afternoon. We were driving to the Officers’ Club for a drink, you know the one down near that big arch thing, and I saw the Division road markers. So I made Tommy stop and ask an M.P. and then we asked about twenty M.P.’s and finally we found you. You’ll come to the club, won’t you? I’m just staying overnight. We’ve got a million things to talk about. Why, it’s been nearly six months since I saw you.”

  She’s got a fine memory anyhow, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, and when you consider the turnover it’s a neat trick to keep us straight.

  “I’d love to, Dotty, but I can’t leave now. I might join you later.”

  “That’s it. We’ll all have dinner together.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Smithers watched Captain Lane uncross and re-cross his legs. You’ll have to get used to it, bud, he thought with pleasure, if you take this girl around in a plane I bet you’ll meet a lot of former competition. As for him, he would rather eat boiled helmet liners than have dinner with Dotty. Attending wakes was not his version of a good time.

  “How’s Bill?” Dotty said. “Where’s Bill?” The way these bloody men glared at each other like constipated bull dogs, she raged. Who gave them such rights? Who had promised them anything? All that was left to do now was rush around, at ever increasing speed, trying to sound merry. It was not much of a success but there was no choice. They could at least have some manners and co-operate.

  “Bill caught one.”

  “Oh Johnny, I’m sorry.”

  “Yes.” If she said anymore, he’d throw her out. He was not going to talk about Bill, now or ever.

  “Levy?” she asked, with some hesitation. She did not want to force Johnny to make a roll call of the dead. That, and much else besides, was what she was running from in the airplanes of the abundant, chummy pilots.

  Lieutenant Colonel Smithers lighted a cigarette and ignored the question.

  “I’m his mailman, now,” Dorothy Brock went on. “I got one letter and forwarded it to Janet Flaxman in Luxembourg. She’s at the club there. But I got another about a week ago and I had so much to do, I simply forgot it. To the same girl. Kathe something. It’s too awful of me but I was up to my neck; we’re making a huge club, it looks like a copy of Madison Square Garden, and I put Levy’s letter away and forgot it. Could I see him, Johnny, and explain? I always liked Levy; I wouldn’t want him to think I’d been careless on purpose.”

  “He’s at the 113th Evac Hospital.”

  “No! What for?”

  “He had a jeep accident.”

  “Oh dear, how did that happen?”

  So he told her. Captain Lane listened, wondering how much more time Dotty was going to waste here. There must be better things to do in Munich than sit in a dingy parlor, with nothing to drink, talking about a jeep driver who’d gone off his chump.

  “You’ll fix it, Johnny, won’t you? I’m sure Levy says all that just because he’s had concussion. We can’t let him go to jail for ten years.”

  “It’s not my job to fix it. That’s Jarvis’s job, his lawyer. I don’t like him but he’s a shrewd operator. He’s worked up a foolproof case and he’s got witnesses to prove every bit of it. Levy’d be in the clear if he’d listen to reason. I’m sold it was an accident, myself. The way Levy sounds, I don’t think he knows what he did. It strikes me he’s got something like combat fatigue. I’ve been to see him twice and Hammer goes to see him and Hancock and I don’t know who else. You can’t even decide if he takes any notice. He says: yes sir, thank you for coming to see me, Colonel, I appreciate it. And that’s about all.”

  “But why?”

  Lieutenant Colonel Smithers shrugged. He didn’t know; there was nothing more he could do.

  “Waste!” Dorothy Brock said and stamped her heel on her cigarette. “My God, hasn’t there been enough?”

  “Maybe you could talk to him. Maybe he’d take it better, coming from a woman.”

  “I will. I will right now.”

  That’s a good idea, he thought, and leave me in peace to be a cop.

  Dorothy Brock turned, with the practised sweetness, the accomplished smile, and said, “You don’t mind, Tommy, do you? You could drop me and go to the club and send the car back for me in a few minutes. That way you’d have a head start.”

  “Allright, Dotty, but let’s get going.” Captain Lane could not control the irritation in his voice. “We haven’t got too much time, as it is.”

  “Where is it, Johnny?”

  “Behind the Town Hall. You can’t miss it.”

  “We’ll see you later?”

  “Sure thing.”

  She put her arms around his neck again, and kissed him on the cheek and said it was marvelous finding him, she’d worried about him, and Lieutenant Colonel Smithers doubted that she heard what she was saying. Then they were gone and for a moment he listened to that cool precise voice talking in the hall to Hancock and then on the street to some soldier probably, and then their car started. Carbon, he thought, testing the noise of the engine as they drove down the block.

  He shut the door and went to his desk, opened the bottom drawer and took out a bottle. It was long, narrow, without a label, and contained cognac. If you drank enough of this you could later drink gasoline and not detect the change. He was not going to offer them a drink, even of this foul stuff, and have that airforce character go around saying the infantry was a bunch of drunks and kept liquor in their desks. But when he smelled it, though he needed a drink badly, he corked the bottle and put it away. You couldn’t swallow it cold; you had to be stiff before you began.

  He remembered how he had dreamed about her, from Luxembourg to the Hürtgen and all the way back; across Germany from the Rhine to the mountains; and here in this stone street. He had feared though, always, that the dream was false; and he could not say she had ever given him grounds for dreams of any kind. So that was over too. He was no worse off than when he started. In the beginning he didn’t know any of them; not Bill, not Dotty, not Levy either. So if, at the end, they were gone, what difference did it make? He was no worse off than when he started. He hadn’t lost anything except three years of his life. That was all: just three years of his life.

  Lieutenant Spalding, the nurse, put her head inside the door and announced, “You’ve got a caller, Jake. A lady.” That ought to brighten him up.

  “I’ve been trying to make the boy smile for three weeks,” she told Dorothy Brock who was waiting behind her in the hall. “He’s presentable. You can go on in.”

  For one moment, he thought it would be Kathe. Against reason, he believed the door would open and she would be standing there, very small in this big place and frightened because of the bars and the strangers, too frightened to say anything, and she would come over to the bed a
nd he could hold her against him with his good arm and kiss her and be happy. How would she know where he was? How could she ever get transportation? He was ready for the disappointment when Dotty came in and he said, “Hello, Miss Brock,” as well as he could through his bandages.

  His head and face were covered with bandages, leaving only his eyes and mouth clear. The dressings around his head gave it a high squarish shape. Johnny had not warned her of this; he had not said what the accident did to Levy. Dorothy Brock imagined, under the white gauze, the fine bones crushed and that face, which would give any woman pleasure even if Levy meant nothing to her, ruined. She had not been prepared so she had no time to think and find a conventional expression of sympathy.

  “I see you mashed your face, Levy.”

  He nodded. She was mad about something. Her eyes looked mean, she was so mad. Maybe it was because of the letters he sent her for Kathe; maybe he shouldn’t have. He could recall nothing else he had done to Miss Brock.

  “You might have thought about Kathe before you did that.”

  She walked over to the window. She hadn’t said hello or shaken hands. He frowned and the ache in his head, which had lessened this last week, grew tight and sharp again.

  The pigs, Dorothy Brock thought, the selfish pigs. They never think of anything but themselves. His face doesn’t matter to him so he goes and runs into a tree. And his girl? Did he stop to consider her? It would make a woman feel beautiful herself if such a man loved her. But he’d take that away from Kathe, in a second, without a backward glance.

  “Nice view,” Dorothy Brock remarked. She pulled up the only chair and sat beside him, looking at the mound of plaster that held his left shoulder and enfolded his arm. “I hear you want to go to jail for ten years.”

  “It isn’t that.” He could not stand any more of this. He was stuck here in bed and they could come whenever they liked and argue at him.

  “How do you feel?”

  “I’m allright.” His left arm hurt so much that he had to watch himself or he’d start crying like a fool. It began last night. The nurse, when he finally told her about it after lunch because he couldn’t eat and she asked questions, said the doctor would look in later this afternoon. He had been waiting for three hours, while the fever burned him and the pain turned like a knife.