Goodbye, Columbus

by Philip Roth

  “Fishbein said—” He stopped. “What I mean to say, Sergeant—” His face and neck were red, and his mouth moved but no words came out. In a moment, he raised himself to attention, gazing down at me. It was as though he had suddenly decided he could expect no more sympathy from me than from Thurston, the reason being that I was of Thurston’s faith, and not his. The young man had managed to confuse himself as to what my faith really was, but I felt no desire to straighten him out. Very simply, I didn’t like him.

  When I did nothing but return his gaze, he spoke, in an altered tone. “You see, Sergeant,” he explained to me, “Friday nights, Jews are supposed to go to services.”

  “Did Sergeant Thurston tell you you couldn’t go to them when there was a G.I. party?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say you had to stay and scrub the floors?”

  “No, Sergeant.”

  “Did the Captain say you had to stay and scrub the floors?”

  “That isn’t it, Sergeant. It’s the other guys in the barracks.” He leaned toward me. “They think we’re goofing off. But we’re not. That’s when Jews go to services, Friday night. We have to.”

  “Then go.”

  “But the other guys make accusations. They have no right.”

  “That’s not the Army’s problem, Grossbart. It’s a personal problem you’ll have to work out yourself.”

  “But it’s unfair.”

  I got up to leave. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” I said.

  Grossbart stiffened and stood in front of me. “But this is a matter of religion, sir.”

  “Sergeant,” I said.

  “I mean ‘Sergeant,’” he said, almost snarling.

  “Look, go see the chaplain. You want to see Captain Barrett, I’ll arrange an appointment.”

  “No, no. I don’t want to make trouble, Sergeant. That’s the first thing they throw up to you. I just want my rights!”

  “Damn it, Grossbart, stop whining. You have your rights. You can stay and scrub floors or you can go to shul—”

  The smile swam in again. Spittle gleamed at the comers of his mouth. “You mean church, Sergeant.”

  “I mean shul, Grossbart!”

  I walked past him and went outside. Near me, I heard the scrunching of a guard’s boots on gravel. Beyond the lighted windows of the barracks, young men in’T shirts and fatigue pants were sitting on their bunks, polishing their rifles. Suddenly there was a light rustling behind me. I turned and saw Grossbart’s dark frame fleeing back to the barracks, racing to tell his Jewish friends that they were right—that, like Karl and Harpo, I was one of them.

  The next morning, while chatting with Captain Barrett, I recounted the incident of the previous evening. Somehow, in the telling, it must have seemed to the Captain that I was not so much explaining Grossbart’s position as defending it. “Marx, I’d fight side by side with a nigger if the fella proved to me he was a man. I pride myself,” he said, looking out the window, “that I’ve got an open mind. Consequently, Sergeant, nobody gets special treatment here, for the good or the bad. All a man’s got to do is prove himself. A man fires well on the range, I give him a weekend pass. He scores high in P.T., he gets a weekend pass. He earns it.” He turned from the window and pointed a finger at me. “You’re a Jewish fella, am I right, Marx?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I admire you. I admire you because of the ribbons on your chest. I judge a man by what he shows me on the field of battle, Sergeant. It’s what he’s got here,” he said, and then, though I expected he would point to his chest, he jerked a thumb toward the buttons straining to hold his blouse across his belly. “Guts,” he said.

  “O.K., sir. I only wanted to pass on to you how the men felt.”

  “Mr. Marx, you’re going to be old before your time if you worry about how the men feel. Leave that stuff to the chaplain—that’s his business, not yours. Let’s us train these fellas to shoot straight. If the Jewish personnel feels the other men are accusing them of goldbricking—well, I just don’t know. Seems awful funny that suddenly the Lord is calling so loud in Private Grossman’s ear he’s just got to run to church.”

  “Synagogue,” I said.

  “Synagogue is right, Sergeant. I’ll write that down for handy reference. Thank you for stopping by.”

  That evening, a few minutes before the company gathered outside the orderly room for the chow formation, I called the C.Q, Corporal Robert LaHill, in to see me. LaHill was a dark, burly fellow whose hair curled out of his clothes wherever it could. He had a glaze in his eyes that made one think of caves and dinosaurs. “LaHill,” I said, “when you take the formation, remind the men that they’re free to attend church services whenever they are held, provided they report to the orderly room before they leave the area.”

  LaHill scratched his wrist, but gave no indication that he’d heard or understood.

  “LaHill,” I said, “church. You remember? Church, priest, Mass, confession.”

  He curled one lip into a kind of smile; I took it for a signal that for a second he had flickered back up into the human race.

  “Jewish personnel who want to attend services this evening are to fall out in front of the orderly room at 1900,” I said. Then, as an afterthought, I added, “By order of Captain Barrett.”

  A little while later, as the day’s last light—softer than any I had seen that year—began to drop over Camp Crowder, I heard LaHill’s thick, inflectionless voice outside my window: “Give me your ears, troopers. Toppie says for me to tell you that at 1900 hours all Jewish personnel is to fall out in front, here, if they want to attend the Jewish Mass.”

  At seven o’clock, I looked out the orderly-room window and saw three soldiers in starched khakis standing on the dusty quadrangle. They looked at their watches and fidgeted while they whispered back and forth. It was getting dimmer, and, alone on the otherwise deserted field, they looked tiny. When I opened the door, I heard the noises of the G.I. party coming from the surrounding barracks—bunks being pushed to the walls, faucets pounding water into buckets, brooms whisking at the wooden floors, cleaning the dirt away for Saturday’s inspection. Big puffs of cloth moved round and round on the windowpanes. I walked outside, and the moment my foot hit the ground I thought I heard Grossbart call to the others, ” ‘Ten-hut!” Or maybe, when they all three jumped to attention, I imagined I heard the command.

  Grossbart stepped forward. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

  “‘Sergeant,’ Grossbart,” I reminded him. “You call officers ‘sir.’ I’m not an officer. You’ve been in the Army three weeks—you know that.”

  He turned his palms out at his sides to indicate that, in truth, he and I lived beyond convention. “Thank you, anyway,” he said.

  “Yes,” a tall boy behind him said. “Thanks a lot.”

  And the third boy whispered, “Thank you,” but his mouth barely fluttered, so that he did not alter by more than a lip’s movement his posture of attention.

  “For what?” I asked.

  Grossbart snorted happily. “For the announcement. The Corporal’s announcement. It helped. It made it—”

  “Fancier.” The tall boy finished Grossbart’s sentence.

  Grossbart smiled. “He means formal, sir. Public,” he said to me. “Now it won’t seem as though we’re just taking off—goldbricking because the work has begun.”

  “It was by order of Captain Barrett,” I said.

  “Aaah, but you pull a little weight,” Grossbart said. “So we thank you.” Then he turned to his companions. “Sergeant Marx, I want you to meet Larry Fishbein.”

  The tall boy stepped forward and extended his hand. I shook it. “You from New York?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too.” He had a cadaverous face that collapsed inward from his cheekbone to his jaw, and when he smiled—as he did at the news of our communal attachment—revealed a mouthful of bad teeth. He was blinking his eyes a good deal, as though he were fight
ing back tears. “What borough?” he asked.

  I turned to Grossbart. “It’s five after seven. What time are services?”

  “Shul,” he said, smiling, “is in ten minutes. I want you to meet Mickey Halpern. This is Nathan Marx, our sergeant.”

  The third boy hopped forward. “Private Michael Halpern.” He saluted.

  “Salute officers, Halpern,” I said. The boy dropped his hand, and, on its way down, in his nervousness, checked to see if his shirt pockets were buttoned.

  “Shall I march them over, sir?” Grossbart asked. “Or are you coming along?”

  From behind Grossbart, Fishbein piped up. “Afterward, they’re having refreshments. A ladies’ auxiliary from St. Louis, the rabbi told us last week.”

  “The chaplain,” Halpern whispered.

  “You’re welcome to come along,” Grossbart said.

  To avoid his plea, I looked away, and saw, in the windows of the barracks, a cloud of faces staring out at the four of us. “Hurry along, Grossbart,” I said.

  “O.K., then,” he said. He turned to the others. “Double time, march!”

  They started off, but ten feet away Grossbart spun around and, running backward, called to me, “Good shabbus, sir!” And then the three of them were swallowed into the alien Missouri dusk.

  Even after they had disappeared over the parade ground, whose green was now a deep blue, I could hear Grossbart singing the double-time cadence, and as it grew dimmer and dimmer, it suddenly touched a deep memory—as did the slant of the light—and I was remembering the shrill sounds of a Bronx playground where, years ago, beside the Grand Concourse, I had played on long spring evenings such as this. It was a pleasant memory for a young man so far from peace and home, and it brought so many recollections with it that I began to grow exceedingly tender about myself. In fact, I indulged myself in a reverie so strong that I felt as though a hand were reaching down inside me. It had to reach so very far to touch me! It had to reach past those days in the forests of Belgium, and past the dying I’d refused to weep over- past the nights in German farmhouses whose books we’d burned to warm us; past endless stretches when I had shut off all softness I might feel for my fellows and had managed even to deny myself the posture of a conqueror—the swagger that I as a Jew might well have worn as my boots whacked against the rubble of Wesel, Minister, and Braunschweig.

  But now one night noise, one rumor of home and time past, and memory plunged down through all I had anesthetized, and came to what I suddenly remembered was myself. So it was not altogether curious that, in search of more of me, I found myself following Grossbart’s tracks to Chapel No. 3, where the Jewish services were being held.

  I took a seat in the last row, which was empty. Two rows in front of me sat Grossbart, Fishbein, and Halpern, holding little white Dixie cups. Each row of seats was raised higher than the one in front of it, and I could see clearly what was going on. Fishbein was pouring the contents of his cup into Grossbart’s, and Grossbart looked mirthful as the liquid made a purple arc between Fishbeins hand and his. In the glaring yellow light, I saw the chaplain standing on the platform at the front; he was chanting the first line of the responsive reading. Grossbart’s prayer book remained closed on his lap; he was swishing the cup around. Only Halpern responded to the chant by praying. The fingers of his right hand were spread wide across the cover of his open book. His cap was pulled down low onto his brow, which made it round, like a yarmulke. From time to time, Grossbart wet his lips at the cup’s edge; Fishbein, his lone yellow face a dying light bulb looked from here to there, craning forward to catch sight of the faces down the row, then of those in front of him, then behind. He saw me, and his eyelids beat a tattoo. His elbow slid into Grossbart’s side his neck inclined toward his friend he whispered something and then when the congregation next responded to the chant Grossbart’s voice was among the others. Fishbein looked into his book now too; his lips, however didn’t move.

  Finally, it was time to drink the wine. The chaplain smiled down at them as Grossbart swigged his in one long gulp, Halpern sipped, meditating, and Fishbein faked devotion with an empty cup. “As I look down amongst the congregation”—the chaplain grinned at the word—”this night, I see many new faces, and I want to welcome you to Friday-night services here at Camp Crowder. I am Major Leo Ben Ezra, your chaplain.” Though an American, the chaplain spoke deliberately—syllable by syllable, almost—as though to communicate, above all, with the lip readers in his audience. “I have only a few words to say before we adjourn to the refreshment room, where the kind ladies of the Temple Sinai, St. Louis, Missouri, have a nice setting for you.”

  Applause and whistling broke out. After another momentary grin, the chaplain raised his hands, palms out, his eyes flicking upward a moment, as if to remind the troops where they were and Who Else might be in attendance. In the sudden silence that followed, I thought I heard Grossbart cackle, “Let the goyim clean the floors!” Were those the words? I wasn’t sure, but Fishbein, grinning, nudged Halpern. Halpern looked dumbly at him, then went back to his prayer book, which had been occupying him all through the rabbi’s talk. One hand tugged at the black kinky hair that stuck out under his cap. His lips moved.

  The rabbi continued. “It is about the food that I want to speak to you for a moment. I know, I know, I know,” he intoned, wearily, “how in the mouths of most of you the trafe food tastes like ashes. I know how you gag, some of you, and how your parents suffer to think of their children eating foods unclean and offensive to the palate. What can I tell you? I can only say, close your eyes and swallow as best you can. Eat what you must to live, and throw away the rest. I wish I could help more. For those of you who find this impossible, may I ask that you try and try, but then come to see me in private. If your revulsion is so great, we will have to seek aid from those higher up.”

  A round of chatter rose and subsided. Then everyone sang “Ain Kelohainu”; after all those years, I discovered I still knew the words. Then, suddenly, the service over, Grossbart was upon me. “Higher up? He means the General?”

  “Hey, Shelly,” Fishbein said, “he means God.” He smacked his face and looked at Halpern. “How high can you go!”

  “Sh-h-h!” Grossbart said. “What do you think, Sergeant?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You better ask the chaplain.”

  “I’m going to. I’m making an appointment to see him in private. So is Mickey.”

  Halpern shook his head. “No, no, Sheldon—”

  “You have rights, Mickey,” Grossbart said. “They can’t push us around.”

  “It’s O.K.,” said Halpern. “It bothers my mother, not me.”

  Grossbart looked at me. “Yesterday he threw up. From the hash. It was all ham and God knows what else.”

  “I have a cold—that was why,” Halpern said. He pushed his yarmulke back into a cap.

  “What about you, Fishbein?” I asked. “You kosher, too?”

  He flushed. “A little. But I’ll let it ride. I have a very strong stomach, and I don’t eat a lot anyway.” I continued to look at him, and he held up his wrist to reinforce what he’d just said; his watch strap was tightened to the last hole, and he pointed that out to me.

  “But services are important to you?” I asked him.

  He looked at Grossbart. “Sure, sir.”

  “‘Sergeant.’”

  “Not so much at home,” said Grossbart, stepping between us, “but away from home it gives one a sense of his Jewishness.”

  “We have to stick together,” Fishbein said.

  I started to walk toward the door; Halpern stepped back to make way for me.

  “That’s what happened in Germany,” Grossbart was saying, loud enough for me to hear. “They didn’t stick together. They let themselves get pushed around.”

  I turned. “Look, Grossbart. This is the Army, not summer camp.”

  He smiled. “So?”

  Halpern tried to sneak off, but Grossbart held his arm.

&
nbsp; “Grossbart, how old are you?” I asked.

  “Nineteen.”

  “And you?” I said to Fishbein.

  “The same. The same month, even.”

  “And what about him?” I pointed to Halpern, who had by now made it safely to the door.

  “Eighteen,” Grossbart whispered. “But like he can’t tie his shoes or brush his teeth himself. I feel sorry for him.”

  “I feel sorry for all of us, Grossbart,” I said, “but just act like a man. Just don’t overdo it.”

  “Overdo what, sir?”

  “The ‘sir’ business, for one thing. Don’t overdo that,” I said.

  I left him standing there. I passed by Halpern, but he did not look at me. Then I was outside, but, behind, I heard Grossbart call, “Hey, Mickey, my leben, come on back. Refreshments!”

  “Leben!” My grandmother’s word for me!

  One morning a week later, while I was working at my desk, Captain Barrett shouted for me to come into his office. When I entered, he had his helmet liner squashed down so far on his head that I couldn’t even see his eyes. He was on the phone, and when he spoke to me, he cupped one hand over the mouthpiece. “Who the hell is Grossbart?”

  “Third platoon, Captain,” I said. “A trainee.”

  “What’s all this stink about food? His mother called a goddam congressman about the food.” He uncovered the mouthpiece and slid his helmet up until I could see his bottom eyelashes. “Yes, sir,” he said into the phone. “Yes, sir. I’m still here, sir. I’m asking Marx, here, right now—”

  He covered the mouthpiece again and turned his head back toward me. “Lightfoot Harry’s on the phone,” he said, between his teeth. “This congressman calls General Lyman, who calls Colonel Sousa, who calls the Major, who calls me. They’re just dying to stick this thing on me. Whatsa matter?” He shook the phone at me. “I don’t feed the troops? What is this?”