From Here to Eternity (78 page)

aged 18 and a hypothetical young male aged 19, both you understand of the acceptedly superior type considered most likely to succeed (both in life and in love), such as, say, a football-hero-recipient-of-the-DAR-medal and a straight-A-girls'-college-prep-major-who-also-doubles-as-cheer-leader. If we take, his mind said, this hypothetical young couple, at the beginning of their - "Oh, go fuck yourself!" Warden hollered. He got the bottle out of the filing cabinet again and drank, this time not because it was thin, but in pure self-defense. If a man could just hang onto one illusion he could still love. The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions. Penetrated by a sudden cunning idea, he set the bottle up in plain sight on the corner of his desk, instead of putting it back in its hiding place. Then he leaned back in his chair still in the dirty, crumpled, prize $120 Brooks Bros, tropical suit and cocked his feet on the desk and grinned at the innocent bottle slyly. He locked his arms behind his head and settled back hopefully to wait for that Chicago stupid Jew lawyer son of a bitch Ross to come in. Maybe that was the ambulance chasing bastard that had been watering his whiskey. The very least he can do is transfer me. Maybe he'll even bust me, he thought hopefully, he busted Ole Ike, dint he?

CHAPTER 47

IF IT could only all be like the luau had been, all the time, Warden thought with his feet cocked on the desk and his head cradled in his locked fingers. That was what it ought to be like. The luau had been on the eighth night. He had been desperate, even to suggest it. And she had been even more desperate to accept. Because this was a tourist luau in Waikiki and like as not they would run into somebody one or both of them knew. But they hadnt run into anyone. They had gone into town .to the luau and each taken a new lover, and gotten the only real relief either one of them got from the other during the whole 10 days. The fact that the new lover she took was named Warden, and the new lover he took was named Karen Holmes, that did not matter. It was a tourist luau, not a real one, but after a few drinks it was practically just as good and you did not mind the fat white vacuum-cleaner faces watching, or the neatly pressed jackets and pants catching the light from the fire whitely. The tourists had all read Somerset Maugham, as preparation for their trip to the tropics, and went in for white linen suits and dresses. But you did not mind, not after a few drinks. Because everything else was there, just like in a real luau. The long ditch with the fire dying down on the hot rocks and the black Kanaka kuke with skin catching red glints from the bonfire putting his layers of banana leaves in the kapuahi ditch to lay the food on, and then the music and hula dancing while the smells began to fan out from under the scorched banana leaves' smell in the still breeze bringing a flood of water into the mouth - the pipi oma roastbeef, and the roasting puaa with a big ohia in his mouth and the pink scrubbed skin beginning to crisp brown (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi), the heikaukau rock crab and welakaukau Hawaiian hot stew in the calabashes cooking. And in front of you the poi and kukui nuts and the i-a paakai salt fish, i-a uahi smoked fish, i-a maloo dried fish, i-a hou raw fish, fish fish fish (pig-skin and poi, pigskin and poi), and the fruits, papaya, pineapple, malala, peels of raw cane - all this just to chew on while you waited for the real dinner (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi) to get itself cooked. And all the time firelight flickering on naked bronze bodies as the greased muscles rippled under the koa trees in the hula. The only luaus she had ever seen were the put-up jobs at Schofield for the officers. She had never seen the kane hula dancers whose masculine grace and swift agile angularity, savage and powerful, outshone and dimmed the hip-swinging wahine dancers as much as the ballet's Spectre de la Rose outshone and dimmed a walkathon. She had never seen the pi-le noseflute either, or the little-tom-tom that they played with the knees and elbows sitting crosslegged. She had never eaten pig-skin and poi. And this place in Waikiki with its stone wall hiding the glade just across the street from where Kuhio Park narrows in to the highway seawall, she had never even heard about. The real dishes, the others, the old ones that smelled like feces until you had ignored your nose and gotten them into your mouth and then forever after never smelled that way again, and that were not on this menu, she did not miss because she did not know about them. And if the songs they played and danced here were mostly songs that the tourists would already know - Song of the Islands, Sweet Leilani, Lovely Hula Hands, Hilo March and Kalhala March, Hanakai Tomboy, and the War Chant - still, she did not know because she had never heard the old ones, the ancient ones, like we use to play at Tony Paea's family luaus, old Tony, who ran a battery shop on Nuuana, and whose father Ioane Paea had once been sole owner and proprietor of the Island of Paea, before the missionaries. Old Tony was somewhere Stateside now. She had really taken it all in, eaten it up. And by the time the roast whole hog and pipi oma roastbeef had been finished off everyone was drunk, even some of the tourists were drunk, and he had stripped off his gook shirt and kicked off his sandals and rolled his slacks up to his knees and jumped out into the firelight and danced Meliani Oe for them with a gardenia snatched from the hair of the youngest wahine stuck over his ear, and that had really gotten her. With the grinning dancers who could not keep from forgetting they were paid entertainers egging him on solo, the seated ones beating time on the ground with their hands, the standing ones stamping it with the feet. It made quite a sensation. Not many white men could dance the hula at all, let alone dance it well. But he had learned well, what old Tony had taught him better. And he had the figure for it, if I do say so as shouldnt. And then when he came back grinning and put the gardenia in her hair, just as a gesture, just to carry it on out. And the fat-faced tourists whispering to each other about the crazy haole wondering who he was must be from old Island family who appeared to be more savagely Hawaiian than the Kanaka natives. Natives, he grinned, who would go back tomorrow morning to their jobs as waitresses at Walgreen's and mechanics in some auto paint-and-body shop on Nuuanu with very unnative haole hangovers and the tourists if they went into Walgreen's for a coke or stopped to get their carburetor fixed would not even recognize them. "You're always full of surprises," she had smiled. "You're always coming up with something. You just love to shock people, dont you? Where on earth did you ever learn to dance like that?" And when they got back to the hotel - inn, they called it - that night it was again like it had once used to be, hot biting wiggling sweating savage, her playing the White Goddess again and him the savage. Like he liked it. But like it had not been very often lately now for a long time, and like it was not to be again, after that one time, during the rest of the last two days. "My savage," she had whispered biting gently. "My primitive crazy savage." The next night, the last but one, he made the mistake of trying to get it back again. He called her His Chippy, My Chippy, as he had done before; but this time she not only pushed him off but flounced out of the bed crying and after a seeming endless period of name-calling in which the worries about the kid came out again ("What if he should get sick? How would I find out? Here, shacked up with another man in a hotel like a common whore? What if he died? Would you care? Yes, a lot you'd care!") ended up by sleeping in the other bed. Just like bundling in the old days, he had thought wanting to beat his fist into the wall, bite blood from his knuckles with the frustration of being unable to say one word that did not sound guilty and apologetic, except that now instead of a board in between we have this rocklike silence. It was during those last two days, when he had been very angry about his slacked Morning Report, that he had told her the full story of Prewitt including Fatso Judson and the whore Lorene from Mrs Kipfer's; with whom he was in love, to let her know for once how the other half lived. And even he was surprised at how greatly concerned she had been, concerned enough to cry, which only made him love her, goddam it, that much more. My point, his mind said, the apex of my conclusions, is that the illusion of romantic love, being an illusion grounded on the principle of you build me up and I build you up, cannot last through the years of you tear me down and I tear you down. Thats why the men step out and the women take to religion. But as long as you can keep the illusion, he argued grimly, you can love. And if you've got the illusion, then by god you do love. Reality or no reality. True, his mind said, coolly. And marriage is the great illusion breaker. You dont believe me, try it. I intend to, he told it. You see, it said, the foundation principle behind the illusive principle of Romantic Love - the Reality, in other words, behind the Fantasy - is Love of Self; which, up to the time of this paper, has remained undiscovered. Probably, Warden said, thats because the illusion has received such general recognition and acceptance through the medium of commercial advertising? Yes, it said indifferently. Now, to get back. What you really love, then, is Milt Warden. As long as she builds you up and makes you love Milt Warden more, because he is such a fine outstanding man, you love her too, naturally. Because she makes you a finer better man. But, when she begins to tear you down and make you love Milt Warden less, because he's such an obvious no good son of a bitch, you naturally dont love her near so much any more. Because you arent such a nice person any more. And eventually, when it keeps on long enough, you dont love her any more at all. Its really very simple, once you understand it. All right, Warden said impatiently. But whats to keep two people from just building each other up indefinitely. Well, his mind frowned, its a little hard to explain to a layman. Theoretically, there is nothing. But in practice it gets rather repetitious. It gets rather hard to keep on inventing new compliments. Eventually, you reach a saturation point beyond which you can do no more than repeat. Naturally, the other party gets suspicious, if not actually bored. A pretty picture, he said. You leave me a very pretty picture. Okay, you've diagnosed the ailment, how about the cure? You misunderstood, his mind said. The subject of this paper is the isolation of the virus. We are not attempting to lay out a course of treatment. Well, thats fine, Warden said. Thats just fine. You prove to me that I'm dying from a disease, and then tell me its incurable. Well, his mind said, the isolation of the virus opens several avenues of approach. We have a few ideas we're working on - Better, he said, to have let me died in blissful ignorance. I thought you were a man who liked to know the facts? his mind said stiffly. Facts, hell! How do you think I'm going to tell her the facts? Thats your problem. Of course, it said, there is always the possibility that she already knows the facts. Yes, he said, that just what I'm afraid of. To date, his mind said, the only known path of recovery from the disease of love is to get married. You mean, just let it wear itself out. Thats it. And walk on crutches the rest of your life. Well, his mind said, at least you wont be dead. Give me polio any time, he said. Well, his mind said, I guess I'll sign off now. If I find anything new I'll let you know. Well, thanks, he said. Well, thanks a lot. He sat on in the chair alone, wondering if this was how a man felt whose doctor has just told him he has cancer, and waiting for mortgage forecloser Ross to come in. He wondered if the man with cancer also would worry most of all about how to tell his wife? Even whiskey had no medicinal value for this disease. Hadnt he just tried two days of it? - because he was afraid to go down to Mrs Kipfer's for another shock treatment? That showed how far gone he was. You're nothing but a husk, Milt, he told himself, and took another drink. A dried up eaten out empty husk. Not so long ago he had at least been able to get temporary relief in a whorehouse. Now he could not even do that, because he was afraid of ruining his reputation with a fiasco. Back in the old days, before the moral United States got a throttlehold on the literary world, they used to write quite a bit about fiascoes. It was quite a subject, then. Now, they did not write about them any more; either because fiascoes were less frequent, which he doubted; or else because they were considered more shameful, which he suspected. After all, you could not propagate the race with fiascoes; and today propagating the race was of the utmost importance, in Germany and in Russia and in the USA, because where the hell are we going to get the manpower for the next war, after this one's done, unless we propagate the race? Why dont you write a paper on that one? he told it. A lot of people would like the answer to that one. But there wasnt any answer from the gallery. In fact, when you thought about it, just about the only consolation for this disease was the fact that it was not a rare one. That you were not the only one who suffered from it. Well, lets wait and see what litigation prolonger Ross has got to say. He's about the only hope thats left. Lt Ross, when he came in, did not say anything. He ignored the bottle sitting in plain sight on the desk. He moved around the orderly room, shaking hands with his new ist/Sgt, talking to get acquainted and taking no notice whatever of either the whiskey or the crummy $120 Brooks Bros. suit or the three days stubble of beard on his ist/Sgts jaw. The dirty kosher schmuck a mingia, Warden thought. He knows goddam good and well he cant run this fucking Compny without me. For two cents I'd offer the schlemiel a drink; then he'd have to notice it. Kotz, Warden said to himself throatily, letting it lie on the back of his tongue like butter. Kotz; kotz. The shithead. "I've got something for you Sergeant," Lt Ross said, apparently feeling he was sufficiently acquainted. He pulled a paper out of his pocket. "Instead of taking the full correspondence course for Reserve Officer's Training, they are going to let you just take this examination. Because of your service, and experience, and rank; and because Col Delbert wrote a letter asking that in your case they waive it." He paused, smiling expectantly. Warden did not say anything. What did they expect him to do? scream with joy? "Here is a copy of the examination you will take next Monday," Lt Ross went on, laying the paper out on the desk. "Col Delbert sent it over for you to glance over and told me to give it to you with his compliments." "Thanks," Warden said lazily, without looking at it. "But I wont need it. Hows about a drink, Lieutenant?" "Why, thanks," Lt Ross said. "I dont mind if I do. Col Delbert said you'd probably say that. He said you probably wouldnt want it or need it, but he thought it would be a good idea to bring it over anyway, just to let you know we're all back of you." Furiously, indignantly, outraged, Warden watched him calmly take the bottle off the desk and uncork it. "It tastes a little thin," Lt Ross said. "Some son of a bitch is been watering it while I was on furlough," Warden said, staring hard at him. "Thats too bad," Lt Ross said. Warden grinned at him. "You know," he said lazily, "I'm surprised at the Great White Father Delbert. I thought old Jake would be doin everything he could to screw me out. Instead of tryin to help me. Especial what with this feud him and Holmes been having the past three or four months." "From what I can gather," said Lt Ross, "the Colonel thinks very highly of you as a soldier. Much too highly to let a thing like a personal disagreement stop him from pushing your application, when he thinks you deserve it." "And," Warden