by Herman Wouk
Far from harboring any relieved notion that he might be free for Pamela Tudsbury, Pug now first understood how hopeless his romance with the English girl had been, and what a strong bond tied him to his wife. That Rhoda did not feel this tie too—that she could write and mail such a letter with her usual breezy exclamation marks and under-linings, cheerily blaming herself and her long dislike of a Navy wife’s existence, praising Pug up almost as a saint, yet telling him that after more than twenty-five years she wanted out, to go to another man—this was a stab from which it would be difficult to recover. He felt it in his gut, a throbbing, weakening wound. Rhoda’s letter was coy about the big question: exactly what had been going on between her and Fred Kirby? Here Victor Henry was torn two ways: by his hard good judgment, which told him that of course his wife had been opening naked thighs to the other man, probably for a long time; and by his love for his wife and his own self-love, which protested that such a thing was impossible. He clung to the dim fact—it was a fact—that Rhoda hadn’t said it in so many words.
Because what Victor Henry now wanted was to get her back. He felt himself desperately in love with Rhoda. Much of this was injured ego—he well understood that—but not all. She was half of him, for better or worse; the weld was a quarter of a century old; she was irreplaceable in his life, with her arms, her mouth, her eyes, her sweet particular graces and ways; she was beautiful, desirable, and above all capable of surprising him. It had taken a nasty shock to drive these blunt truths home. He would have to court this woman again! He could not greatly blame her for the affair; he had already decided that in a brandy-soaked fog before passing out. How close had he not come to writing exactly the same kind of letter? Nor, strangely, did he have strong feelings about Fred Kirby. The thing had happened to those two people, much as it had to him and Pamela; only Rhoda had gone over the edge. The pictures in his mind made him sick with revulsion; but in cold honesty he had to look at the event in this rational way.
Rage at Madeline’s boss perhaps did him some good. One reason for surmounting this crisis was to seek out and confront Hugh Cleveland. Regret cut at Pug for his softness in letting her stay in New York. At least he could have tried to order her back to Washington; she might have gone. Now this celebrated swine’s wife was threatening to sue him for divorce, naming his twenty-one-year-old assistant—unjustly, Madeline swore in a long vehement paragraph, but that was hard to swallow. Unlike Rhoda’s letter, Madeline’s was no bombshell. What could have been more predictable for a girl adrift alone in New York; if not with Cleveland, then with some other man? Madeline had been shot down like a dove flying over a rifle range.
“Pug! I tried all yesterday afternoon to find you. Where the hell were you hiding!”
Jocko Larkin came striding in, a scarlet-faced freckled fat four-striper indistinguishable from twenty others. He closed his door, tossed his cap on a hook, and said into his squawk box, “No calls, Amory.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Well!” Larkin sat back in his swivel chair, fat hands locked behind his head, surveying his classmate with a penetrating eye. “Good to see you. That’s hell about the California. She’d have had a great skipper.”
“Well, Jocko, I’d say my misfortune’s lost in the shuffle.”
“Pug, who gave you my message? I left it at half a dozen places.”
“What message? Nobody. I came here to see you.”
“What about?”
“Orders.”
“That’s what I wanted to see you about.” Larkin looked over his shoulder, though nobody else was in the room, and turned off his intercom box. “Pug, Admiral Kimmel is going to be relieved. At his own request.” Jocko almost whispered this, adding with a sarcastic little grin, “Like Louis the Sixteenth had himself shortened by a head, at his own request. His successor will be Admiral Pye—for how long, we don’t know, but Pye wants to start shaking up the staff. Let’s face it, something smells here. Luckily, the personnel section has nothing to do with war alerts. It didn’t happen on my watch. But it happened. Admiral Pye wants you for Operations—now hold it, Pug!” Jocko Larkin held up a hand as Victor Henry violently shook his head. “Let me give you my judgment. This is as great a break as a man in our class can have. Just remember there are six Iowa class battleships building now, due for commissioning in twelve to twenty months. The greatest warships in the world. You’ll probably get one after this.”
“Jocko, give me a ship.”
“I’m telling you, you’ll undoubtedly get one.”
“Now. Not in 1943.”
“No can do, Pug. Listen to me. You don’t say no to Cincpac! Operations is a marvellous opening for you.”
“Where’s Admiral Pye’s office?” Henry got to his feet.
“Sit down, Pug.” Larkin rose too, and they stood glaring at each other. Larkin said, “You son of a bitch, you never could play football or tennis, and you can’t think straight, either.”
“I can swim pretty good.”
Larkin looked nonplussed, then he burst out laughing. “Oh, sit down, Pug.”
“Do I get a ship?”
“Sit down.”
Pug sat.
“What’s the matter, Pug? You look green around the gills, and you don’t act right. Is everything okay?”
“I drank too much brandy last night.”
“You did? You?”
“I didn’t like losing the California.”
“I see. How’s Rhoda?”
“Just fine.” Victor Henry thought he brought the words out calmly, but Larkin raised his eyebrows. Folding fat fingers over his white-clad paunch, Larkin stared thoughtfully at Henry.
“Let’s see. You have a boy on the Enterprise, don’t you? Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. I have a submariner, too. He’s on the Devilfish. Or was.”
“The Devilfish, eh?” Larkin’s calm tone was very forced.
“Yes.”
Opening a folder on his desk, Larkin studied several sheets clipped inside. “The Northampton might conceivably be available. I say might. Most likely not.”
“The Northampton? God love you, Jocko, that’s about the heaviest thing we’ve got left here.”
“Pug, I don’t care. A cruiser command doesn’t compare to Cincpac’s Deputy Chief for Operations. You know that! Tim Saunders came out of that job last year with two stars, junior as hell. Even if I could get you the Northampton, you’d be making the mistake of your life.”
“You don’t know the mistakes I’ve made. Now you listen to me, Jocko. I’ve shuffled all the high-strategy paper I ever want to in this Navy. Four years in War Plans, nearly three years in Europe. I’m not bucking for two stars, not any more. I’m a sailor and a gunner, and there’s a war on.” Victor Henry swept an arm at the window and the shattered battle fleet. “If you can’t find me anything else, I’ll take a squadron of minesweepers. Okay? I want to go to sea.”
“I hear you, loud and clear.” Heaving a sigh that turned into a groan, Jocko Larkin said, “One more flap I’ll have with the admiral, that’s all.”
“The hell with that. I want him to know this is my doing. Where is he?”
“Listen, Pug, if you talk to the admiral the way you’ve been talking to me, you’ll get sent to the States on a medical. You look like death warmed over, and you’re acting shell-shocked. I’ll see what I can do here. Get some sleep, lay off the brandy, and whatever’s bothering you, put it on ice. I’ll try to find something.”
“Thanks, Jocko. If you want to call me, I’ll be at my son’s house.” He gave Larkin the number.
As they shook hands over the table, Captain Larkin said with odd softness, “When you write Rhoda, give her my love.”
Naval Officers Club
Pearl Harbor
12 December, 1941
Dear Rhoda:
I’m somewhat stymied by the problem of answering your astounding letter, but putting it off won’t give me any inspiration. I don’t think I should waste your ti
me setting down my feelings on paper. Anyway, I’m not sure I can do it, not being very good at that sort of thing, at best.
If I really believed this move would make you happy, maybe I could endure it better. However, it strikes me as a calamity for you as well as for me; and I am expressing this opinion though it hasn’t been asked for.
I know I’m no Don Juan, and in fact have been pretty much of a pickle-face around you a good part of the time. The reasons for this are complicated, and it might not be too helpful to go into them now. The basic point is that, taking the rough with the smooth, you and I have made it this far. I still love you—a lot more than I’ve showed, perhaps—and in your letter you’ve managed to say a few kind things about me.
I’m compelled to believe that at the moment you’re “love-sick as a schoolgirl,” and that you can’t help it, and all that part. I guess these things will happen, though one’s always caught unawares when the roof falls in. Still, you’re not really a schoolgirl, are you? Getting used to anybody new at our age is a very hard job. If you’re a widow, that’s different. Then you have no choice. But here I am still.
The life we’ve been leading in recent years has put a strain on our marriage. I recognize that, and I’ve certainly felt the strain myself. In Manila I said to Byron that we’ve become a family of tumbleweeds. That’s the truth, and lately the winds of war have been blowing us all around the world. Right now it strikes me that those same winds are starting to flatten civilization. All the more reason for us to hang on to what we have—mainly each other, and our family—and to love each other to the end. That’s the way I’ve worked it out. I hope that on further thought you will, too.
I’ll probably be at sea most of the time for the next year or two; so I can’t make the immediate effort to mend matters that seems urgently called for. Here’s how I’m compelled to leave it. I’m ready to forget—or try to—that you ever wrote the letter; or to talk it over with you on my next Stateside leave; or, if you’re absolutely certain you want to go ahead with it, to sign the papers and do what you wish. But I’ll put up a helluva fight first about that. I have no intention of simply letting you go. In plain words I want two things, Rhoda: first, your happiness; second, if at all possible, that we go on together.
I’ve seen a bit of Warren. He’s turned into a splendid officer. He has everything. His future is limitless. He has the brains, drive, acuteness, toughness, and sheer ability to become Chief of Naval Operations. Byron has come along too. We’ve been fortunate in our sons. I know they’re facing hazards, but the whole world’s in hazard, and at least my boys are serving.
I don’t know what went wrong with Madeline. I’m kind of sick about that, and don’t propose to dwell on it. If the fellow wants to marry her, that may clean the mess up as much as anything can. If not, he’ll be hearing from me.
You were right to say that your news would hurt less because of my orders to the California. In a peculiar fashion it’s working out that way. Ever since I flew into Pearl Harbor on the Clipper, after seeing Wake and Midway in flames, I’ve been living on a straight diet of disaster. Your letter almost fitted in as something normal. Almost.
I’m a family man, and a one-woman man, Rhoda. You know all that. Maybe I’m a kind of fossil, a form that’s outlived its time. Even so, I can only act by my lights while I last. My impression was, and remains, that Fred Kirby—despite what’s happened—is much the same sort of fellow. If I’m right about that, this thing will not work out for you in the long run, and you had better extricate yourself now. That’s as honest a judgment as I can give you.
Victor is a handsome baby, and Janice is a good mother, and very pretty. Our other grandson looks unbelievably like Briny as an infant. I’m enclosing a snapshot I picked up in Moscow from Natalie’s old friend Slote. I hate to part with it, but you’ll want to see it, I know. Let’s hope to God she got herself and that kid safely out of Italy before Mussolini declared war.
Jocko Larkin sends his love. He’s fat and sleek.
That’s about it. Now I’m going to start earning my salary—I trust—by fighting a war.
Love,
Pug
It was nearly lunchtime when Victor Henry finished writing this letter, and the officers’ club lounge was becoming crowded and noisy. He read the letter twice, thinking how meager and stiff it was, but he decided against rewriting it. The substance was there. One could revise some letters a hundred times without improving them. The letter he had posted to Pamela Tudsbury (how long ago that seemed!) had been more clumsy and barren than most of the discarded ones. He sealed the envelope.
“Say, Pug!” Jocko Larkin, walking past with three younger officers, halted, and told them to go ahead and secure a table. “I’ve been trying to call you. Do you know about the Devilfish?”
“No.” Pug’s heart thumped heavily. “What about it?”
“Well, it was the Sealion that was sunk at Cavite. The follow-up report came in a little while ago. The Devilfish was undamaged.”
“Really?” Pug had to clear his throat twice. “That’s definite, now?”
“Couldn’t be more definite. The dispatch says the Devilfish report was erroneous.”
“I see. I’m sorry about the Sealion, but you’re a bearer of good news. Thanks.”
“My other news isn’t so hot, Pug. The thing we talked about—I’m trying but that looks like a pipe dream.”
“Well, you warned me. It’s all right.”
“I’m still scratching around for something, though. Join us for lunch.”
“Another time, Jocko.”
Dropping the letter in the club mailbox, Pug went out into the sunshine. A stone had rolled off his heart; Byron was all right! And one way or another, Jocko would get him out to sea. Strolling aimlessly through the Navy Yard, digesting these sharp turns of fortune, he arrived at the waterfront. There alongside the fuel dock, with thick oil hoses pulsing, was the Northampton.
On leaving Larkin’s office, Pug had fought off a temptation to visit the cruiser, deciding that it might be a jinx to set foot on board before knowing his orders. Now it didn’t matter. He thought of mounting the gangway and having a look around. But what for? He had served a year and a half in a sister ship, the Chester. These were handsome vessels, he thought, strolling along the dock beside the bustling Northampton, which was loading ammunition and frozen food stores as well as fuel for battle patrol—handsome vessels, but half-breed bastards, spawned by a sickly cross of politics and warship-building.
The Washington Treaty, which Pug considered a preposterous folly, had bound the United States back in 1922 to limit its cruisers to less than ten thousand tons, and to guns of eight-inch caliber. There had been no limit on length. These hybrids were the result—overblown destroyers, with the length of battleships but a quarter the weight of metal, with slender beams, light armor, and medium punch. Their mission was to act as scouts and merchant raiders, and to fight enemy cruisers. Any one of Japan’s ten battleships could blow the Northampton out of the water; nor could she survive a torpedoing, except with perfect damage control. After the California, the Northampton was a relatively shrunken affair.
Still, Pug thought, he would have been glad enough to get her. It was exciting to see the cruiser taking on beans, bullets, and oil for a combat mission. Jocko was right, Operations was the inside track. But, for the good of his soul right now, Pug felt he needed to be loading beans, bullets, and oil on his own ship.
He drove back to the house. On the desk in his bedroom, a handwritten note was clipped to a wrinkled Western Union cable:
From: Janice.
To: Dad-in-law.
Subject: Miscellaneous.
1. In case anything comes up, am at the Gillettes with Vic. Home for dinner.
2. Warren phoned. Won’t be back. They sortie at dawn.
3. Yeoman from California delivered the attached. Says it’s been kicking around the base for days, and just came to their office on the beach.
4.
Love.
He opened the cable.
DEAREST JUST THIS INSTANT HEARD ON THE RADIO OF JAPANESE ATTACK AM UTTERLY HORRIFIED FRIGHTFULLY WORRIED ABOUT YOU DESPERATELY ASHAMED OF THAT RIDICULOUS IDIOTIC LETTER WORST POSSIBLE TIMING FORGET IT PLEASE PLEASE AND FORGIVE HOPE YOURE SAFE AND WELL CABLE ME LOVE RHO
He sat nodding grimly as he read it. Rhoda to the life! He could hear her telephoning it: “Am UTTERLY horrified, FRIGHTFULLY worried about you, DESPERATELY ashamed of that RIDICULOUS, IDIOTIC letter. Worst POSSIBLE timing…” Pug suspected it was a bone to the dog. He knew Rhoda’s bursts of contrition. She was never so sweet as immediately after some disgusting behavior. This saving grace had gotten her over many rough spots; and her impulse in sending the cable might well have been sincere. But the process of repair would be long, if indeed it was even beginning. Their marriage now was a salvage job like the California. He did not know what to reply, so he tossed the cable into the desk drawer, beside the letter for which it apologized.
That night at dinner Pug drank a lot of wine, and a lot of brandy afterward; Janice kept pouring, and he gratefully accepted. He knew he would not sleep otherwise. The alcohol worked; he scarcely remembered turning in. At four in the morning, he snapped wide awake, and it occurred to him that he might as well watch the sortie of the Enterprise. He dressed quietly, closed the outside door without a sound, and drove to the overlook point.
The darkness was merciful to Pearl Harbor. The smashed battleships were invisible. Overhead a clear starry black sky arched, with Orion setting in the west, and Venus sparkling in the east, high above a narrow streak of red. Only the faintest smell of smoke on the sea breeze hinted at the gigantic scene of disaster below. But the dawn brightened, light stole over the harbor, and soon the destruction and the shame were unveiled once more. At first the battleships were merely vague shapes; but even before all the stars were gone, one could see the Pacific Battle Force, a crazy dim double line of sunken hulks along Ford Island—and first in the line, the U.S.S. California.
