The Naked and the Dead (9 page)

            Goldstein sighed. "Yes," he answered quietly.

            Roth had a flush of warmth for Goldstein. There was something very sympathetic about him, he decided. These thoughts he had were the kind of things you could tell only to a man. A woman had to be concerned with her children, and with all the smaller things. "There are lots of things you can't tell a woman," Roth said.

            "I don't think so," Goldstein said eagerly. "I like to discuss things with my wife. We have a wonderful companionship. She understands so much." He paused as if to find a way to phrase his next thoughts. "I don't know, when I was a kid of about eighteen, nineteen, I used to have a different idea of women. I wanted them, you know, for sex. I remember I used to go to prostitutes, and I would be disgusted, and then after a week or so I would want to go again." He gazed at the water for a moment, and then smiled wisely. "But being married made me understand a lot about women. It's so different from the way you think of it when you're just a kid. It's. . . I don't know, it isn't so important. Women," he said solemnly, "don't like it the way we do. It doesn't mean as much to them."

            Roth was tempted to ask Goldstein some questions about his wife, but he hesitated. He was relieved by what Goldstein had said. The private aches, the self-doubts he had known when he heard soldiers talking about their affairs with women were a little soothed now. "That's true," he admitted gladly. "Women just aren't interested in it." He felt very close to Goldstein as if they shared a deep knowledge. There was something very nice, very kind, about Goldstein. He would never be cruel to anybody, Roth thought.

            But even more, he was certain that Goldstein liked him. "It's very nice, sitting here," Roth said in his deep hollow voice. The tents had a silver color in the moonlight and the beach glistened at the water's edge. Roth was full of many things he found difficult to utter. Goldstein was a kindred soul, a friend. Roth sighed. He supposed a Jew always had to go to a fellow Jew to find understanding.

            The thought depressed him. Why should things be that way? He was a college graduate, educated, far above nearly all the men here, and what good did it do him? The only man he could find who was worth talking to sounded a little like an old Jew with a beard.

            They sat there without talking for several minutes. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and the beach had become very dark and quiet. A few muted noises of speech and laughter from the other pup tents filtered through the night. Roth realized he would have to return to his tent in a few minutes, and he dreaded the prospect of being awakened for guard. He watched a soldier come walking toward them.

            "I guess that's Buddy Wyman," Goldstein said. "He's a nice kid."

            "Is he coming to that reconnaissance platoon with us?" Roth asked.

            Goldstein nodded. "Yes. When we found out we were both going to the same place we decided to bunk together if they let us."

            Roth smiled sourly. He should have known. He moved aside as Wyman crouched to come into the tent, and waited for Goldstein to introduce them. "I think I saw you when they got us all together," Roth said.

            "Oh, sure, I remember you," Wyman said pleasantly. He was a tall slim youth with light hair and a bony face. He dropped on one of the blankets and yawned. "Boy, I didn't think I'd be talking that long," he apologized to Goldstein.

            "That's all right," Goldstein said. "I got an idea on how to fix the tent, and I think it's going to stay up tonight." Wyman examined it, and noticed the stakes. "Hey, that's swell," he said. "I'm sorry I wasn't here to help you, Joe."

            "That's okay," Goldstein said.

            Roth felt as if he were no longer wanted. He stood up and stretched his body. "I guess I'll be taking off," he said. He rubbed his hand along his thin forearm.

            "Stay around awhile," Goldstein said.

            "No, I want to get some sleep before guard." Roth started walking back to his tent. In the darkness, his feet dragged. He was thinking that Goldstein's friendliness did not mean very much. "Just a surface part of his personality. It doesn't go deep."

            Roth sighed. As he walked, his feet made soft slushing sounds through the sand.

            "Sure. Listen," Polack said, "there's all kinds of ways of beating a game." He extended his long pointed jaw at Steve Minetta and grinned. "They ain't a way you can't figure out to get around something."

            Minetta was only twenty, but his hair had receded far enough to give him a high forehead. He had developed a thin mustache which he trimmed carefully. Once he had been told he looked like William Powell, and he combed his hair to increase the resemblance. "Naw, I don't agree with you," he said. "Some raps you can't beat."

            "What're you talkin' about?" Polack wanted to know. He twisted about in his blankets, and turned to face Minetta. "Listen," he said, "once in the butcher shop, I'm drawin' a fowl for this old biddy, and I try to get away with one of the two pieces of fat around the belly." He paused dramatically, and Minetta laughed at the grin on Polack's big lewd mobile mouth.

            "Yeah, so what?" Minetta asked.

            "Well, she's watching me real close, and when I start to wrap up the fowl, she says, 'Where's the other piece of fat?' I look at her and I say, 'You don't want it, lady, it's diseased. It'll ruin the taste of the whole chicken.' She shakes her head and says, 'Never mind, young man, I want it.' So what could I do, I give it to her."

            "How'd you beat the game there?" Minetta wanted to know.

            "Hah, before I give it to her, I cut open the bile sack on the liver. That chicken must have tasted like shit."

            Minetta shrugged. The moon cast enough light into the tent for him to see Polack's face. He was grinning, and Minetta decided Polack was comical with the three teeth missing on the left side of his mouth.

            Polack was perhaps twenty-one but his eyes were shrewd and bawdy, and when he laughed his skin was wizened, tough, like the skin of a middle-aged man. Minetta felt a little uncomfortable with him. Secretly he was afraid to match his knowledge against Polack's.

            "Stop throwing it," Minetta said. Who did Polack think he was telling the story to?

            "No, it's the truth," Polack said in a hurt voice. He always dropped the "h" when he said "think" or "the" or "truth."

            "Yeah, it's da troot," Minetta said, mimicking him.

            "You havin' a good time?" Polack asked.

            "I can't complain," Minetta said. "You talk like something out of a comic book." He yawned. "Anyway, one thing nobody ever beat was the Army."

            "I ain't done so bad," Polack said.

            "You're doing bad till the day you get out of it," Minetta told him. He clapped his hand against his forehead, and sat up. "The goddam mosquitoes," he said. He rummaged underneath his pillow, a towel wrapped about a soiled shirt, and drew out a small bottle of mosquito lotion. As he rubbed it over his face and hands he grumbled. "What a way for a guy to live." He propped himself on an elbow and lit a cigarette. He remembered he was not supposed to smoke at night, and for a moment debated with himself. "Aaah, fug it," he said aloud. Unconsciously his hand shielded the cigarette, however. He turned toward Polack and said, "Boy, I don't like to live like a pig." He pounded his pillow smooth. "Sleeping on top of your own filthy clothes, wearing dirty clothes to sleep. Nobody lives like that."

            Polack shrugged. He was next to the youngest of seven brothers and sisters, and until he went to an orphanage he had always slept with a blanket spread out on the floor near a coal stove in the center of the room. When the fire died down in the middle of the night the first child to become chilled would get up and fill the stove again. "It ain't so bad wearin' dirty clothes," he told Minetta, "it keeps the bugs off ya." He had washed his own clothing since he was five years old.

            "Ain't that a hell of a choice?" Minetta asked. "Smell your own stink or get carried away by the bugs." He was thinking of the clothes he used to wear. He was always known as the best dresser on the block, the first kid to pick up the new dance steps, and now he had a shirt which was two sizes too big for him. "Hey, did you hear that joke about Army clothes?" he asked. "It comes in two sizes, too large and too small."

            "I heard it," Polack said.

            "Aaah." Minetta remembered the way he would spend an hour in the middle of an afternoon dressing himself carefully, and combing his hair several times. It gave him pleasure to do that even when he had no place to go. "You tell me how to get out of the Army, and I'll say you can beat every game."

            "There's ways," Polack said.

            "Sure, you can go to heaven too, but who does?"

            "There's ways," Polack repeated mysteriously again, nodding his head in the darkness. Minetta could just make out his profile, and he decided that he looked like a cartoon of Uncle Sam with his hooked broken nose and his long jaw slanting back to his receded gums.

            "Well, what way?" Minetta asked.

            "You ain't got the guts for it," Polack said.

            "I don't see you getting out," Minetta persisted.

            Polack's voice was rasping and humorous. "I like it in the Army," he said.

            Minetta was becoming irritated. It was impossible ever to win an argument with Polack. "Aaah, fug you," he said.

            "Yeah, fug you too."

            They turned away from each other and settled down in their blankets. A mist was blowing in from the ocean, and Minetta shivered a little. He thought of the reconnaissance platoon to which they had been assigned, and wondered with a little quiver of fear if he could take combat. He started to drowse, and thought dreamily of returning to his block wearing his overseas ribbons. It would be a long time, he realized, and the fear of combat came back again. He heard a battery fire a few miles away, and pulled the blanket over his shoulder. It gave him a cozy sensation. "Hey, Polack," he said.

            "Wha. . . at?" Polack was almost asleep.

            Minetta forgot what it was he wanted to say, and on an impulse he asked, "You think it'll rain tonight?"

            "Cats and dogs."

            "Yeah." Minetta's eyes closed.

            That same night Croft was discussing the new arrangement of the platoon with Martinez. They were squatting on the blankets inside their pup tent. "That Mantelli's a funny wop," Croft said.

            Martinez shrugged. Italians were like Spanish, like Mexicans. He didn't like this kind of conversation. "Five new men," he mumbled thoughtfully. "Goddam big platoon." He smiled in the dark and clapped Croft on the back lightly. It was rare for Martinez to show any affection. After a moment he muttered, "Recon lots of fighting now, huh?"

            Croft shook his head. "Damn if I know." He cleared his throat. "Listen, Japbait, they's something I want to talk about to ya. I'm gonna divide us into two squads again, and I been thinkin' I'm gonna keep most of the old men in one squad and set up the other one with you and Toglio."

            Martinez fingered his delicate aquiline nose. "The old squad with Brown?"

            "Yeah."

            "Red, Brown's corporal?" Martinez asked.

            Croft snorted. "I wouldn't pick Red on a bet. That boy can't take any orders so how the hell could he give 'em?" He picked up a stick and lashed it against his legging. "Naw, I thought of Wilson," he said, "but Wilson can't even read a map."

            "Gallagher?"

            "I would have liked to make Gallagher, but he just blows his top in a tight spot." Croft hesitated. "I tell you, I picked Stanley. Brown's been batting my ear about how good Stanley is. I figured he'd be the best man to work with Brown."

            Martinez shrugged. "Your platoon."

            Croft broke the stick in two. "I know, Stanley is the biggest goddam brown-nose in the platoon, but at least he wanted the job, which is more than you can say for Red or Wilson. If he ain't any good, I'll bust him, that's all."

            Martinez nodded. "Only pick, I guess." He looked at Croft. "You say I have squad with goddam men who are. . . who are
new?"

            "That's right." Croft slapped Martinez on the shoulder. He was the only man in the platoon whom Croft liked, and he felt an anxious, almost paternal care for Martinez, which was at odds with the rest of his nature. "I'll tell you, Japbait," he said roughly, "you been through more than any other man in the platoon including me. The way I figure it, I'm going to use the squad of old men for most of the patrols because they know what to do. That new squad is going to get the easy ones for quite a while. That's why I want you to have it."

            Martinez paled. His face was expressionless but one of his eyes winked nervously several times. "Brown, bad nerves," Martinez said.

            "The hell with Brown. Ever since the rubber boats he's been missing all the shit storms. It's his turn. You need a rest, man."

            Martinez fingered his belt. "Martinez goddam good scout, okay," he said proudly. "Brown good boy, but his nerves. . . no fuggin good. I'm with old squad, okay?"

            "The new one's gonna have it easier."

            Martinez shook his head. "New men, no know me. No fuggin good, don't like it." He tensed himself with the effort to put his feelings into English. "Give order. . . trouble. Don't listen to me." Croft nodded. The argument had validity. And yet he knew how frightened Martinez was. Sometimes at night Croft could hear him groaning from a nightmare. When he put his hand on Martinez's back to awaken him, Martinez would spring up like a bird startled into flight. "You really sure, Japbait?" Croft asked.