Part 7
Esme was standing with crossed ankles again. "You're quite sure you won't forget to
write that story for me?" she asked. "It doesn't have to be exclusively for me. It can--"
I said there was absolutely no chance that I'd forget. I told her that I'd never written a
story for anybody, but that it seemed like exactly the right time to get down to it.
She nodded. "Make it extremely squalid and moving," she suggested. "Are you at all
acquainted with squalor?"
I said not exactly but that I was getting better acquainted with it, in one form or
another, all the time, and that I'd do my best to come up to her specifications. We shook
hands.
"Isn't it a pity that we didn't meet under less extenuating circumstances?"
I said it was, I said it certainly was.
"Goodbye," Esme said. "I hope you return from the war with all your faculties intact."
I thanked her, and said a few other words, and then watched her leave the tearoom.
She left it slowly, reflectively, testing the ends of her hair for dryness.
This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, and the scene changes. The people
change, too. I'm still around, but from here on in, for reasons I'm not at liberty to
disclose, I've disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to
recognize me.
It was about ten-thirty at night in Gaufurt, Bavaria, several weeks after V-E Day. Staff
Sergeant X was in his room on the second floor of the civilian home in which he and
nine other American soldiers had been quartered, even before the armistice. He was
seated on a folding wooden chair at a small, messy-looking writing table, with a
paperback overseas novel open before him, which he was having great trouble reading.
The trouble lay with him, not the novel. Although the men who lived on the first floor
usually had first grab at the books sent each month by Special Services, X usually
seemed to be left with the book he might have selected himself. But he was a young
man who had not come through the war with all his faculties intact, and for more than
an hour he had been triple-reading paragraphs, and now he was doing it to the
sentences. He suddenly closed the book, without marking his place. With his hand, he
shielded his eyes for a moment against the harsh, watty glare from the naked bulb over
the table.
He took a cigarette from a pack on the table and lit it with fingers that bumped gently
and incessantly against one another. He sat back a trifle in his chair and smoked
without any sense of taste. He had been chain-smoking for weeks. His gums bled at the
slightest pressure of the tip of his tongue, and he seldom stopped experimenting; it was
a little game he played, sometimes by the hour. He sat for a moment smoking and
experimenting. Then, abruptly, familiarly, and, as usual, with no warning, he thought
he felt his mind dislodge itself and teeter, like insecure luggage on an overhead rack. He
quickly did what he had been doing for weeks to set things right: he pressed his hands
hard against his temples. He held on tight for a moment. His hair needed cutting, and it
was dirty. He had washed it three or four times during his two weeks' stay at the
hospital in Frankfort on the Main, but it had got dirty again on the long, dusty jeep ride
back to Gaufurt. Corporal Z, who had called for him at the hospital, still drove a jeep
combat-style, with the windshield down on the hood, armistice or no armistice. There
were thousands of new troops in Germany. By driving with his windshield down,
combat-style, Corporal Z hoped to show that he was not one of them, that not by a long
shot was he some new son of a bitch in the E.T.O.
When he let go of his head, X began to stare at the surface of the writing table, which
was a catchall for at least two dozen unopened letters and at least five or six unopened
packages, all addressed to him. He reached behind the debris and picked out a book
that stood against the wall. It was a book by Goebbels, entitled "Die Zeit Ohne Beispiel."
It belonged to the thirty-eight-year-old, unmarried daughter of the family that, up to a
few weeks earlier, had been living in the house. She had been a low official in the Nazi
Party, but high enough, by Army Regulations standards, to fall into an automatic-arrest
category. X himself had arrested her. Now, for the third time since he had returned from
the hospital that day, he opened the woman's book and read the brief inscription on the
flyleaf. Written in ink, in German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the
Esme was standing with crossed ankles again. "You're quite sure you won't forget to
write that story for me?" she asked. "It doesn't have to be exclusively for me. It can--"
I said there was absolutely no chance that I'd forget. I told her that I'd never written a
story for anybody, but that it seemed like exactly the right time to get down to it.
She nodded. "Make it extremely squalid and moving," she suggested. "Are you at all
acquainted with squalor?"
I said not exactly but that I was getting better acquainted with it, in one form or
another, all the time, and that I'd do my best to come up to her specifications. We shook
hands.
"Isn't it a pity that we didn't meet under less extenuating circumstances?"
I said it was, I said it certainly was.
"Goodbye," Esme said. "I hope you return from the war with all your faculties intact."
I thanked her, and said a few other words, and then watched her leave the tearoom.
She left it slowly, reflectively, testing the ends of her hair for dryness.
This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, and the scene changes. The people
change, too. I'm still around, but from here on in, for reasons I'm not at liberty to
disclose, I've disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to
recognize me.
It was about ten-thirty at night in Gaufurt, Bavaria, several weeks after V-E Day. Staff
Sergeant X was in his room on the second floor of the civilian home in which he and
nine other American soldiers had been quartered, even before the armistice. He was
seated on a folding wooden chair at a small, messy-looking writing table, with a
paperback overseas novel open before him, which he was having great trouble reading.
The trouble lay with him, not the novel. Although the men who lived on the first floor
usually had first grab at the books sent each month by Special Services, X usually
seemed to be left with the book he might have selected himself. But he was a young
man who had not come through the war with all his faculties intact, and for more than
an hour he had been triple-reading paragraphs, and now he was doing it to the
sentences. He suddenly closed the book, without marking his place. With his hand, he
shielded his eyes for a moment against the harsh, watty glare from the naked bulb over
the table.
He took a cigarette from a pack on the table and lit it with fingers that bumped gently
and incessantly against one another. He sat back a trifle in his chair and smoked
without any sense of taste. He had been chain-smoking for weeks. His gums bled at the
slightest pressure of the tip of his tongue, and he seldom stopped experimenting; it was
a little game he played, sometimes by the hour. He sat for a moment smoking and
experimenting. Then, abruptly, familiarly, and, as usual, with no warning, he thought
he felt his mind dislodge itself and teeter, like insecure luggage on an overhead rack. He
quickly did what he had been doing for weeks to set things right: he pressed his hands
hard against his temples. He held on tight for a moment. His hair needed cutting, and it
was dirty. He had washed it three or four times during his two weeks' stay at the
hospital in Frankfort on the Main, but it had got dirty again on the long, dusty jeep ride
back to Gaufurt. Corporal Z, who had called for him at the hospital, still drove a jeep
combat-style, with the windshield down on the hood, armistice or no armistice. There
were thousands of new troops in Germany. By driving with his windshield down,
combat-style, Corporal Z hoped to show that he was not one of them, that not by a long
shot was he some new son of a bitch in the E.T.O.
When he let go of his head, X began to stare at the surface of the writing table, which
was a catchall for at least two dozen unopened letters and at least five or six unopened
packages, all addressed to him. He reached behind the debris and picked out a book
that stood against the wall. It was a book by Goebbels, entitled "Die Zeit Ohne Beispiel."
It belonged to the thirty-eight-year-old, unmarried daughter of the family that, up to a
few weeks earlier, had been living in the house. She had been a low official in the Nazi
Party, but high enough, by Army Regulations standards, to fall into an automatic-arrest
category. X himself had arrested her. Now, for the third time since he had returned from
the hospital that day, he opened the woman's book and read the brief inscription on the
flyleaf. Written in ink, in German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the
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