From Here to Eternity (69 page)

the consequences. I admired that. You were harsh and strong and unwavering like -" she halted, searching for an adequate comparison, "-like a GI blanket on a cold night. But you've lost it. I was looking for something when you came along, something proud, and I thought I'd found it I thought you were it. "Well, it appears I'm still looking for it. It seems you have developed into being only a reasonable facsimile. Perhaps I'm a perfectionist, but I dont seem to care much for reasonable facsimiles. "I've made a pompous ass out of Dana, and now it seems I'm making a pompous ass out of you. You werent like that when I met you. Apparently thats what I always do to men. I touch them and they all start to crumble." "I've been thinking the same thing myself," Warden said. "And I dont like the way it feels either. You were tough and solid as a rock at first, and as proud as a lion. And now you've developed into a goddam whining crybaby that I cant tell the truth to, because you cant take it. That first day there at the house -" he said. "And so they got married and lived unhappily ever after," Karen said bitterly. "Amen," he said. "You think its easy," Karen said, "you think theres nothing to it. Your mistake was that you ever let me trust you. How many times I've seen you mentally undress every young flip we pass on the street - even if we shoot past her at fifty in the car, while I sit there knowing as well as I know my name you've forgotten me entirely and are mentally taking her to bed." "But Jesus Christ!" Warden protested horrifiedly, "I dont do that!" Karen smiled. "What I mean, its not the same thing at all. Honest. The two things have nothing to do with each other. With them its like going to a whorehouse, like a -" "It makes me want to tear your eyes out," Karen said. "Oh," Warden said. "And how many times do you think I've watched you drive off home knowing you were going to sleep in the same room with that son of a bitch, maybe in the same bed for all I know? While I go home to my bunk and imagine every last little physical detail and picture? I dont guess you got to worry much about being privately owned." "Why, you silly damned food," Karen raged, "how could you of all people ever think I'd have anything to do with Dana again? I dont feel that way about him. I dont know if either of us ever did. I could be friends with him, close friends, if he'd let me; but as for that - why its just out, I never go back to a man once he's let me down. If I'm not chaste, at least I have that much pride. The thought of another man makes me physically sick." "And that makes it a lot easier on me, dont it?" "I dont think your lot with me is too very much harder on you than my lot with you is on me," Karen said precisely. "And so they got married and lived unhappily ever after," Warden grinned at her viciously. "Yes," Karen said. "That seems to be the traditional procedure." They sat looking at each other absolutely inarticulately furiously, every argument that could have been offered already postulated, every protest that could be framed already charted, overwhelmingly aware: that they had reached the absolute end of sane verbal conversation without having explained a single damned thing to the other, overwhelmed by the eternal semantics of the sexes. They must have sat that way for almost half an hour, each wanting sympathy but refusing to give sympathy and boiling indignantly at the other's lack of sympathy, as if there were at least one room between them and they were lying each in his own bed in the darkness tensely, until finally the indignation of not being understood boils over into another emotion which is the tragic sorrow of not being understood. And all around them the yelling haole highschool boys ran on chasing the shrilling haole highschool girls who also ran on. "You know what?" Warden said stifledly, "we're just exactly alike. We're absolute opposites; and yet we're just alike." "We both imagine the other one's trying to throw us over," Karen said, "and neither one of us thinks the other appreciates us as much as we appreciate him." "We curse and'storm at each other for doing the same identical things," Warden said, "and we're both of us so goddam jealous we cant hardly stand it." "We imagine all sorts of horrible things," Karen said, "and we know the other one isnt near good enough for us." "I've never been so miserable in my life as I have since I met you," Warden said. "Neither have I," Karen said. "I wouldnt trade a minute of it," Warden said. "Neither would I," Karen said. "You'd think we were old enough to know better," Warden said. "We ought to," Karen said. "I still wouldnt change it," Warden said. "Loves like ours have always suffered," Karen said bright-eyedly ardently. "We both knew that when we went into it Loves like ours have always been hated," she said, looking at him with the half-parted mouth and warm-shining eyes of a Joan of Arc that made him suddenly want terribly to take her to bed. "Society does everything it can to prevent love like ours and what it cant prevent it destroys. Securely married American men dont like to think their wives have the right to leave them - not for love, which has never bought anything yet. And securely married American women who have been talked into believing it, know they've been duped, thats why they hate that kind of love worst of all because they have all had to sacrifice it for security and hate themselves for doing it so much they dont want anybody else to have a chance at it. Because if they ever once admit its true, then both their lives and their men's have all been for nothing. Two or three years of foolish adolescent love in their youth - that they gave up and convinced themselves they had outgrown. "Thats why its so important we dont lose ours; thats why we have to fight so hard to keep it; fight all of them, and fight ourselves too." "Yes," Warden said. "And theres only one way, Milt. The only way we can defeat them is to make our love conform to their conventions - outwardly. We can keep the core of it private and clean, but if we dont conform it outwardly they'll end up by not only killing our love but us too." "Yes," Warden said. "And the only way we can conform it is for me to accept the customary hogwash of success so we can give it the security. Its easy for you, whose job is to handle the core. But I'm the one who has to do the outside conforming. I have to make the living, that the security depends on. I'm the one who'll have to agree with them and do things their way. "All my life, from the time my goddam brother became a priest, I've fought their beef-eating middleclass assurance. I fought everything it stood for. I've made myself stand for everything they were against. "Who do you think it was put Hitler up? The workers? No, it was the same middleclass. Who do you think gave the Communists Russia? The peasants? No, the Commissars. That same goddam middleclass. In every country everywhere that same middleclass holds every rein. Call it Fascism or call it Individual Initiative or call it Communism, and you still dont change it any. Each country calls it by a different name so they can fight all the other countries that look liable to get too powerful. I've stood up against all of that, I've stood up for me Milt Warden as a man, and I've made a place for myself in it, by myself, where I can be myself, without brownnosing any man, and I've made them like it. "And now I'm supposed to go on and become an Officer, the symbol of every goddam thing I've always stood up against, and not feel anything about it. I'm supposed to do that for you. "You're the bait in the trap. They know how to work it, dont think they dont. What does dear mother do when sonny comes home from college all full of revolt and dissatisfaction with the way the world has always been run? "They find him a sweet young thing thats around handy to relieve himself on and they finagle till they got him married to her, and then sonny quiets down to his duty and lets his revolt run off and accepts the status quo." "I'm not the bait," Karen said. "I dont want to be the bait. I hate it as bad as you do. You must know that." "Do you think the pig tied in the trap for the tiger wants to be bait? And how much good does it do him?" "Is that really the way you feel about it, Milt?" "Thats the way I feel. All my life I've had to fight for one thing, the one thing nobody wants a man to be, to be honest. And now, to become an Officer - Did you ever see an honest Officer? that stayed an Officer?" "Then you cant do it." Warden grinned at her combatively. "Yes, I can. And I will." If she had told him he could do it, instead of letting him tell it to her, he would have been indignant and angry. But now, with her looking at him brimmingly admiringly, he felt a great sense of power that comes with accomplishment. "I'll shove it up all their asses," he told her, "and steal the bait out of the trap without springing it and to hell with them," and he believed every word of it with her watching him proudly and he felt Milt Warden swell up stronger in Milt Warden then he had ever felt Milt Warden. "We are just alike," Karen said. "We're just alike." "And I wouldnt trade a minute of it," he said. "Oh, Milt," Karen said. "I dont want to be bait, Milt. I love you, Milt. I want to help you, not hurt you." "Listen," Warden said enthusiastically. "I've got a 30-day re-up furlough coming to me that I've been putting off ever since I got in this Company. And I've got $600 downtown in the bank. You and me are going to take that furlough, to anyplace in the Islands you want to go, and we're going to have us a time none of them will ever be able to take away from us, war or no war, hell or high water." "Oh, Milt," she said softly, and in the saying of it made him feel finer than he could remember ever having felt in his life, "that would be wonderful. Imagine it, just the two of us, with no hiding and no acts to put on. Wouldnt it be wonderful." "It will be wonderful," he corrected. "Oh, if we only could." "We not only can; we will. Whats to stop us?" "Nothing," she said. "Nothing except ourselves." "Okay then." "Oh, dont you see, Milt? I couldn't leave for that long. Its a wonderful dream, and I love you for it, but we couldnt do it. I couldnt leave Junior for that long." "Why not? You're going to leave him for good someday," he said doggedly. "Aint you?" "Of course I am," Karen said helplessly, "but thats different. Until I make the break I have a responsibility to him that I cant just shrug off. The poor little devil will have a hard enough time of it as it is, with the life he's had all picked out for him. I owe him at least that much. "Oh, Milt, dont you see? Its a dream. We couldnt get by with it. How would I explain my being gone for a whole month? Dana suspects something now, and if -" "Let him suspect, the son of a bitch. He's been true to you, hasnt he?" "But we cant do that. We have to keep it a secret until you've gotten a commission and are out of his Company, the whole thing depends on that. Dont you see?" "I've never liked hiding from him," Warden said stubbornly, "who the hell is he I should hide from him?" "Its not who he is, its what he is. You know that, Milt. And if I were to be gone for a month just at the same time you took your furlough.. ." "I know it," Warden said sullenly. "Its just that sometimes it gets my goat and I get sick of it." "We couldn't get by with it, Milt. Dont you see? Not for thirty days. Maybe for ten. I could probably get away for ten days. But not thirty. You could take your furlough and then a week later I could leave and meet you somewhere for ten days and then come home early, before you did." Warden was trying to divide his dream down by three. It was a hard job. You couldnt even spend $600 in ten days. He did not answer. "Oh, Milt," she said, "dont you see how it is? I'd love it. I'd do anything to have the chance. But not for thirty days, Milt, dont you see? I just cant." "I guess thats right," he said. "I guess it was only a pipedream anyway." "Oh when?" she said. "Oh, Milt, when? Are we going to have to go on like this forever? Wont we ever be able to do things without being afraid? without having to calculate and scheme and hide out like criminals? When, Milt, when?" "There now," Warden said. "There, baby, there now. Ten days is all right. Ten days is fine. It'll work out, you'll see," he said, stroking the back of the small fragile head that always made him feel loutish and clumsily dangerous as if he were handling eggs. "Ten days? Hell," he said, "ten days is a lifetime. You'll see." "I cant take it like this much longer, Milt," Karen said muffledly into the big CKC shirt with its male smell, allowing herself the luxury of letting the bars all the way down for once, enjoying for just this moment the eternal degradation of being a woman. "I cant take it much longer," she whimpered, tasting it, the eternally caught and held hard in the grasp of some man, the forever humiliated under his improper liberties, the eternally imprisoned under his lead-heavy weight it was impossible to squirm out from under, the forever helpless except for the mercy of him who always takes what he wants without any, and that all women learn instinctively not to expect. "I cant even walk over to the Commissary without feeling all their eyes on the back of my neck. I've never been so openly degraded in my whole life," she said, savoring it. That was all they wanted. That was all any of them wanted. You give them the greatest thing you possess, the most intimate secret, and they - just take it. Well, let them have it. Let them all have some of it. Let them root and rut and rowel, if it was no more important than that why were they all so anxious to keep it away from each other? "I cant take it much longer, Milt," she whispered. "There," Warden said, feeling the blood come up chargingly into his eyes and turn everything red like a mountain twilight, and not knowing why, "there, there. You wont have to, baby. You wont have to take it. Come on," he said, "lets go down to the beach and have a good hard swim and then go someplace and have a party." The second it was out he knew he shouldnt have said it. Karen sat up and stared at him piercingly with eyes like a cat's, the tears still dribbling out of them. "It isnt just sex, is it, Milt?" she asked, with the ringing tension of a rockcrystal that too heavy a touch will crack all apart. "It isnt just animal sex, is it? You want more than that, dont you? Theres more to it than that, isnt there, Milt? I know theres more to love than that. Isnt there, Milt?" Warden held his love up by one corner and inspected it under the magnifying glass of animal sex. "Isn't it, Milt?" "Of course it is. Its a lot more than that." There was no use trying to argue it, or explain it again. He had wanted her badly, there for a moment; now he didnt care much. You