Night Soldiers (38 page)

He read the letter many times and spent a long time considering his reply. Finally, he chose not to write back. What would be the point? In July, after three days in a detention cell, he had been taken to a small room and “tried.” The judge had apparently come in from a country house and was wearing white shoes, as for a garden party, beneath his robes. Over a fifteen-minute period, several documents had been read aloud in rapid, legal French. Then the judge sentenced him to spend the rest of his natural life in Santé prison.

Prisoner 16-28 was, in the French custom, isolated in his cell. This was believed to encourage penitence, which was, after all, the intent of a penitentiary. Cell 28 was six feet long and four feet wide. A bed folded up against the wall in the daytime and there was a chair, chained to a ring in the wall. There was a toilet, and a water spigot for washing. The cell was painted brown halfway up the wall, then yellow to the ceiling. In the door was a Judas port that served two purposes: surveillance once an hour and food three times a day, almost always mashed lentils and black bread. Drinking water was poured into his “quarter,” a tin cup that held a quarter of a liter, at mealtimes. Twice a week, for one hour, he was taken into a courtyard and allowed to walk the perimeter and converse with other prisoners. For the rest of his time he remained alone in his cell, allowed one book a week. These were usually boys' adventure stories with morally improving points of view or, sometimes, religious tracts. Behind a fine mesh grille was a window made of thick, opaque green glass that bathed the cell in a milky light yellowed by the colors on the walls.

In one corner of the window, however, was a hole about the size of a one-franc piece, with a fine web of fracture lines about it—something had been poked through the wire mesh by a former occupant. Khristo was thankful to the man, whoever he had been, because it meant he could see a tiny piece of the sky over Paris. At dawn, when the bell woke him up, it was the first thing his eyes sought and, again and again, in the course of the endless days, he spent hours staring at it. Sometimes it was a pale and washed-out blue, after a rainfall, perhaps. Other times it was a vivid blue, which meant cool, sunny weather. Sometimes it was gray. Sometimes, the best of all times, a part of a white cloud could be seen.

Brush your teeth with Deems
Your smile needs those gleams!

Robert Eidenbaugh leaned back in his swivel chair and promised himself for the hundredth time to oil the squeak. Bister, the poisonous little snake in the next cubicle—the
corner
cubicle, from which he could see both Lexington Avenue and East Forty-second Street—could hear him every time he sat back in the chair. He'd said so, one day at the water cooler: “Heard you squeaking away this morning, Eidenbaugh. Leaning back again?” Clearly, he meant
leaning back
in both the physical and metaphorical senses of the expression.

Bister had done well at Princeton and wore a bow tie—just a little frivolous for the J. Walter Thompson advertising company—and definitely saw himself as a man on the way up. Following his remark, he'd shot a furry eyebrow and smiled coldly, confirming his own wit. Confirming his own progress in the world.
Bister
didn't lean back.
Bister
stayed hard at it all day long, pounded his typewriter, talked on the phone, went to meetings—he quite loved meetings—or thought up ways to apple-polish Mr. Drowne, the copy chief.
Bister
was on the way up.

He was not. After the snotty remark at the water cooler, he'd let the conical paper cup fill to the brim and, just about the time the great bubble broke the surface with its characteristic
blurp
, squeezed the sides violently so that a miniature waterspout leapt into the air, narrowly missing Bister's dazzling brogans on the way down. “Sorry, Bister,” he'd said as the little man jumped backward, “do you melt?”

But Bister was correct. He did sit back in the chair—
squeak
—and gaze out onto Lexington Avenue, eleven floors below. It was December, and it was snowing. Soon it would be Christmas, which meant that 1941 was almost over. Good! Next there'd be 1942. Hooray! During which time he would undoubtedly do exactly what he'd done in 1941, which was very damn little.

For the last year, the only thing that had truly engaged his attention was the war in Europe. The high point of his day had become the morning delivery—just after the milk—of the
New York Times
. Over coffee he would read of Polish lancers attacking German tank units. Of the rules of the German occupation: Poles forbidden to ride in taxis, carry briefcases, have their teeth filled with gold, use railroad waiting rooms, walk in parks, call from phone booths, enter athletic events, or wear felt hats. But it wasn't only the Germans, the newspaper told him. Forty Russian divisions had invaded Poland from the east, along a thousand-mile frontier. The Russian armor flew white flags, and the tank commanders yelled down from their turrets that they'd come to help the Poles fight the Germans. Thus they were unopposed.

When it came the turn of France to be subdued, he was enraged. He had spent his childhood in France and the thought of the jack-booted Nazis striding arrogantly down the streets of Toulon, where he'd played as a child, was nauseating to him.

Guilt pricked him and made him lean forward over the hateful Remington as the chair complained.
Brush your teeth with Deems /
Says the girl of your dreams!
Not so bad. But then they'd need a
girl of your dreams
in the layout, and he knew that old Dr. Deems—a dentist from Rye, New York, before he became a tooth powder millionaire—wasn't having anything quite so daring in his advertising campaign. There would be a sparkling illustration of the tooth powder can—an example of which sat on his desk—in its brand-new blue and white colors. The art director had tried for a dream girl in one of his mock-ups, but Dr. Deems had labeled the notion “prurient.”

Prurient!

Brush your teeth with Deems / It's prurient, it seems
.

Pretty good, he'd have to share that with his friend Van Duyne when they met for breakfast on Sunday.

Squeak
. He watched the snow wander aimlessly past the window. Tonight would be dinner with his fiancée, whom he didn't especially like, and her visiting parents, whom he absolutely detested. Her broad-bottomed “Daddy,” whom she “utterly adored,” was a shoe manufacturer from Dayton, Ohio, and a rabid isolationist. “War in Europe?” he'd said at their last dinner, a two-hour nightmare at Longchamps. “Don't bet on it, kiddo. Not for us.” He'd paused to attack his roast beef, then added, “You know who wants
that,”
while tapping his nose and winking. Jews, he meant. The International Zionist Conspiracy to embroil the USA in a foreigners' war.

Maybe
, he thought,
if I move very slowly
. He tried to get back to the typewriter without communicating his ennui to Bister, but no, it would have to be oiled.
Brush your teeth
—oh why in God's name had he slept with the girl? A hot August night at the Walker vacation house on a Michigan lake, the Walkers gone off to their bridge evening at the public library, alone in the house, a little necking, a little petting, a little more, the way her breathing changed, then the sudden, caution-to-the-winds disencumberment of her Helen Wills tennis costume, blousy and Grecian … and then the rest of it.

Followed by a year of assumptions on her part which he found, in his general malaise, difficult to resist. Of course they were engaged—thus the way was cleared for an encore of the summer lovemaking—of course the wedding would be in June. Suddenly, it seemed to have gone long past the point where he could say that they weren't quite right for each other. Long past. She would scream, she would weep, she would be so terribly
hurt
. That he'd
used
her. No, he couldn't face it. He would marry and have it over with. What was he waiting for? The Walker clan had money, he'd be rid of Bister. The sobering responsibilities of family life would brace him up, steady him down—one couldn't stay single forever. And his own family would surely approve.

He glanced at the calendar on the wall. December 5. Friday. Friday? Friday! Suddenly, his joy was crushed by an ominous shadow that filled the opaque green glass panel beside the open door to his cubicle. That could only be Mr. Drowne, who liked to loom up above his victims before he pounced.

“Say Bob?” He leaned his upper half around the door frame.

“Yes, Mr. Drowne?”

“Got that Deems copy all tied up?”

“Working on it, sir.”

“Read me what you have there.”

“Uh, I'm only, ah,
formulating
here.”

“Bob …”

“Brush your teeth with Deems, Your smile needs those gleams!” The affected perkiness in his voice sounded shrill and desperate.

Mr. Drowne shook his head mournfully. “You're not selling smiles, Bob. You're supposed to be selling taste. Mint. Remember mint?” He reached over and picked up the open tooth powder can and rapped it twice on the desk. A little cloud of minted smoke puffed up through the holes.

“I'll keep after it, Mr. Drowne.”

“Plans for the weekend, Bob?”

“I'm going to the football game on Sunday. Giants versus Dodgers, at the Polo Grounds.”

“Yes, well, enjoy yourself, but do make certain that finished copy is on my desk when I come in Monday. Okay? If that means a little elbow grease on the weekend, well …”

“I'll get it done, sir.”

Mr. Drowne produced his usual departure sound—the sigh of the oft-betrayed man—then trudged off to his next victim.

Out the window, the snow drifted down onto the Christmas shoppers hurrying along Lexington, carrying green and red parcels. The shop windows had wreaths and little silver bells on granular snow. Above the glass panel in front of his desk, the face of Bister rose slowly, like a sea monster. “Formulating, Bob?” His eyes glowed with spite.

Eidenbaugh grabbed for a weapon, and Bister disappeared instantly with what could only be described as a
chortle
. He looked down at his hand and saw that he'd picked up the desktop name-plate that had been a gift from his parents on the occasion of his graduation from Columbia University, seven years earlier. R
OBERT F. EIDENBAUGH
, it said. Fitting, he thought, very fitting. An intended symbol of his success in times to come, it now mocked him and his too-long tenure as a copywriter. Bister was right. He wasn't going up. He wasn't going anywhere.

His father had been a captain in the American Expeditionary Forces, arriving in France in 1917 and fighting in the battle of Château-Thierry. It had been a hellish experience, one he did not speak of easily. Yet he had fallen in love with France, and in 1921, when his oldest son was eight and the youngest three, he had taken the family off to live first in Paris, then in Lyons, finally settling, six months later, in a small rented villa on the outskirts of Toulon, the Mediterranean port just east of Marseilles. Arthur Eidenbaugh was a naval architect and was able to find a position—a minor one, initially, little more than a drafting clerk—with an engineering firm associated with the Toulon shipyards. Elva Eidenbaugh was formerly a schoolteacher from Wiscasset, Maine, and no stranger to hardship. She made the money stretch and set the tone of family life—which was to be a permanent adventure, with all setbacks perceived as challenges to character and sense of humor.

They were a tight, sunny family, denying each other consolation as a matter of course. A bad cold or a bad mood simply made life difficult for everybody, so best take your lumps and move ahead, sympathy was not on the schedule. As for France, they attacked it, led in the charge by Mrs. Eidenbaugh. They made forays into
boulangeries
and
pâtisseries
, picnicked at the slightest provocation, and descended en masse on museums, carrying away every crumb of available culture. Mr. Eidenbaugh worked long hours, deflected credit to his French colleagues, and was soon enough raised to a position commensurate with his ability and education.

As a family, they liked being different, enjoyed the notion of
living abroad
, and their cheerful optimism seemed to draw pleasant experiences their way. Robert could not remember a time when somebody or other—postman, merchant, parents' acquaintance—wasn't ruffling his hair. With his new position, Mr. Eidenbaugh was able to engage a maid to care for the children, and in this way they picked up the language naturally and effortlessly. At home, they spoke a curious mixture of French and English. “Where can I have put
l'adresse?”
his mother would say. “I've looked and looked, but it seems
toute à fait perdue
. ”

Robert went to French schools, learned the rudiments of soccer, dressed in a uniform of blue shorts and white shirt, and allowed the requisite Catholic instruction to roll effortlessly off his Presbyterian soul. Family roots went back into Scotland, Wales, and Germany, on both sides, with the first Eidenbaughs reaching America in the mid-nineteenth century and settling on the coastlines of southern New England, where they engaged themselves in the building of ships.

In 1930, with the United States struggling in the Depression and Europe's economy falling apart, Mr. Eidenbaugh's firm won a large contract that called for the refitting of an entire naval battle group, a contract that was to support the firm throughout the early thirties. Thus, that same year, Robert was able to return to the United States to attend Columbia University, majoring in English literature with indifferent success. He was bright enough, but most of what he read seemed distant and remote and he had none of the scholar's passions. On graduation, in June of 1934, he returned to France for two years, working at a succession of small jobs, first around Toulon, later in Paris. He translated business correspondence, taught at small private schools, fell in love with wearying frequency, skated on the edge of Parisian bohemian life, and took to smoking a large, curved pipe.

In 1936, bored with aimlessness, he returned to New York and found a job with the J. Walter Thompson Company in the copy department. With war clearly on the way in Europe, the rest of the family returned in 1938, Arthur Eidenbaugh finding employment at a Boston firm of naval architects with long connection to French shipbuilding interests in Canada.

On Sunday morning, Eidenbaugh met Andy Van Duyne for breakfast at a Schrafft's on the Upper West Side. Surrounded by West End Avenue garment manufacturers taking their families out for brunch, they set to work demolishing a basket of soft yellow rolls. The basket was periodically replenished by stern Irish waitresses in black uniforms, who also kept their coffee cups full as they awaited their scrambled eggs.

Andy Van Duyne was his single surviving friend from Columbia. His family owned a petrochemical brokerage associated with Standard Oil and had a season box for the Giants' football games. Clients never seemed to use them, so Van Duyne and his friends had gotten into the habit of making a day of it on fall Sundays, starting with a late breakfast.

Van Duyne looked like an owl, a tall, spindly one, squinting out at the world through round spectacles with thick lenses. At college, he'd been a reliable source for decent bootleg and the occasional real thing, smuggled in from Canada. His family's vacation house on Long Island had a particularly private and convenient beach, it seemed, and, in return for looking the other way, they would at times discover the odd case left behind on the sand—clearly an appreciative offering. Van Duyne had gained some considerable prominence as a college prankster, using a rhinoceros-foot waste-paper basket he'd got hold of somewhere to make tracks in the snow leading up to the Central Park reservoir. This resulted only in a rather tentative news story, never really setting off the
rhinoceros-in-the-drinking-water!
panic he'd imagined, though there were some who swore they could taste it for weeks thereafter. Van Duyne had barely scraped through college and was now ensconced in an oakpaneled office at Morgan Guaranty, where he'd taken to reading
Slade Rides to Laramie
, holding the book on his lap, just below the edge of a polished antique desk.