Short Stories: Five Decades (34 page)

Sergeant Fourier was smoking pensively in the open and the other men were sitting, strangely quiet, under cover. When Sergeant Fourier saw him he started guiltily and threw his cigarette away as unostentatiously as possible. He stood at attention and saluted and with his right heel tried to douse the glowing speck in the dirt. Somehow, the sight of the small man with the comfortable little pot belly trying to pretend, like a vaudeville comedian, that he hadn’t been smoking, irritated Lieutenant Dumestre, who all morning and all afternoon had been grappling bitterly with war and fratricide and tragic, bloody policy.…

He returned the Sergeant’s salute curtly. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked sharply, his high voice making all the men in the tarpaulin turn their heads coldly and automatically to watch him. “You know there’s to be no smoking.”

“Please, sir,” Sergeant Fourier said stupidly, “I was not smoking.”

“You were smoking,” Lieutenant Dumestre said, weeping inside because inside he knew how ridiculous this charge and countercharge was.

“I was not smoking, sir.” Sergeant Fourier stood very straight and formal and stupid with the problem of the evening, almost happy to have a simple little idiotic argument to worry about at least for ten minutes.…

“You’ve been told, you’ve been told!” Lieutenant Dumestre shrieked in his highest voice, mourning deep within himself for that womanly timbre, for his military insistence upon form and truth at this unmilitary hour, but somehow unable, with the Captain’s departure and the imminence, potent and desperate, of the Americans over the horizon, to stop the high noise of his tongue. “At any moment we may be bombed. A cigarette glows like a lighthouse in a black desert at ten thousand feet! Why don’t you draw a map of the gun position and publish it in the morning newspapers?” He saw Labat look at Boullard and shrug coldly and turn away with an air of dangerous significance and something within him clutched at his throat, but now there was no stopping that high, silly tongue, freed for a moment from the locked agony and doubt of the day’s decision making. Here at least was familiar ground. Troops disobeying orders. Troops endangering security of the post or station. Troops slightly insubordinate, lying.… His weary, ragged mind, terribly grateful to be relieved of its unaccustomed task of painful exploration, relapsed into the formal, years-long grooves of Saint Cyr, of countless garrisons, countless lectures.… “There will be double security tonight, two-hour watches for everyone,” the voice still high, but with the three-thousand-year-old bite of military command. “An extra half day’s ammunition will be drawn up from the battery dump by three this morning.” He saw the men’s faces bleakly collapse and also something else in them, although he couldn’t tell in the rush of his commands what it was. Even as he spoke he hated himself for what he was doing, knowing that a better man would have ignored the cigarette or joked about it.… He hated Sergeant Fourier, standing there, pained and stupid and impassive, but in a way he was grateful to him, because he had given him the opportunity at this late hour once more for postponement.

He turned on his heel and strode away. Later, perhaps at midnight, he would come back, he told himself, and finally get this question of the Americans settled. He pulled his shoulders high in disgust as the sound of his own voice squalling about the cigarette sounded in his ears, but there was nothing to be done about it and he walked without looking back. Midnight, he thought, midnight is still time.…

Back under the tarpaulin, Boullard looked around him at the men. Their faces were grave, but except for Millet, there was consent in all of them.

Boullard walked out from under the tarpaulin with his rifle.

Midnight, Lieutenant Dumestre was thinking, when the bullet struck, midnight is still time.…

They buried him quickly without marking the grave and sat down in front of the gun to wait for the army of the Americans.

Medal from Jerusalem

“
T
he question that haunts me,” Schneider was saying in his high, soft voice, “is, my jazz, is it real jazz or is it merely European jazz?” He was leaning against the bar of the Patio restaurant between Tel Aviv and Jaffa, which used to be the old German consulate, and speaking to Lieutenant Mitchell Gunnison in short, gaspy bursts of talk, smiling a little sadly and a little archly at Mitchell, and occasionally touching his sleeve lightly with the tips of his fingers. “I mean,” he said, “I know it’s good enough for Palestine, but in America what would they say about a pianist like me?”

“Well,” said Gunnison gravely, “I’d say they’d think it was real jazz.” He was young and he spoke slowly and he seemed to think very hard before he answered a question.

“You don’t know,” Schneider said, sighing, “how you’ve encouraged me. I listen to the records, of course, but they’re old, and you never know what actually is going on in America and, after all, we all know there
is
no other jazz, no place, and with a war like this, and God knows how long it’s going to last, a musician gets out of touch. And once you are out of touch, you might as well die. Just die.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” Mitchell said. “You’ll be a sensation in America.”

“If I ever get there.” Schneider smiled sadly and shrugged a little. “Anyway, you must come tomorrow. I’m working on a new arrangement with the drummer. A rhumba, Viennese style. It’s ridiculous, but I think you’ll like it.”

“I’m sorry,” Mitchell said. “I won’t be here tomorrow.”

“Then next night,” said Schneider.

“I won’t be here then, either,” Mitchell said. “I’m going tomorrow. Leave’s up.”

There was a little silence and Schneider looked down at the bar and flicked his beer glass with his fingernail, making a frail musical sound in the dark oak barroom. “Some more fighting?” Schneider asked.

“A little more fighting.” Mitchell nodded soberly.

“You fly, no doubt,” said Schneider. “I have no wish to intrude on military information, but the wings on the chest …”

“I’m a navigator.” Mitchell smiled at him.

“It must be an interesting profession. Measuring the distance between one star and another star.” Schneider finished his beer slowly. “Well,
sholom aleichem
… That’s good luck. Or, to be more exact, peace be with you.”

“Thank you,” Mitchell said.

“Hebrew,” said Schneider. “I’m ashamed to talk Hebrew to anybody who knows it. The accent, they tell me, is frightful. But you don’t mind, do you?”

“No,” said Mitchell. He turned to the bartender. “Mr. Abrams,” he said, “another beer please, for Mr. Schneider.”

“No, no.” Schneider waved his hands in protest. “The artist should not drink before the performance. After … Another matter … Ah,” he said, bowing elaborately, “
Fräulein
, we are enchanted.”

Mitchell turned around. Ruth was standing there, looking a little hurried and out of breath, but smiling, and as pretty as ever in a light cotton dress, with her skin burned dark by the sun and her eyes full of welcome and pleasure at seeing him.

“I was afraid,” she said, coming over to him and taking his hand, “I was afraid you were going to be angry and leave.”

“I wasn’t going to leave,” Mitchell said. “Not until they closed the doors on me and threw me out.”

“I am delighted.” Ruth laughed and squeezed his arm. “I am so absolutely delighted.”

“My presence,” Schneider said, bowing, “I no longer consider necessary. A hundred thanks for the beer, Lieutenant. Now I play or Mr. Abrams will start complaining he is not getting his money’s worth out of me. Listen, carefully, if it is not too much of a bore, to my version of ‘Stardust.’”

“We’ll listen very carefully,” Mitchell said.

Schneider went outside to the patio, and a moment later preliminary erratic runs and fragments of melody came floating into the bar as he warmed up for the night’s work.

“So.” Ruth faced him, looking at him with an expression that was half ownership, half amusement. “So. What have we been doing all day?”

“Well,” Mitchell started, “we …”

“You are the most beautiful lieutenant in the American Army,” Ruth said, grinning.

“Well, we went swimming,” Mitchell said, pleased and embarrassed, pretending she’d said nothing. “And we hung around on the beach. And we flew a couple of barroom missions. Gin and grapefruit juice.”

“Isn’t Palestinian grapefruit wonderful?” Ruth asked loyally.

“Sensational,” Mitchell said. “Nothing like it in America.”

“You’re such a liar.” Ruth leaned over and kissed him lightly.

“There was an Eighth Air Force pilot down from England,” Mitchell said, “and he told us how tough it was over Wilhelmshaven and we told the lies about Ploesti and then it was time to shave and come to see you.”

“What did you think while you were shaving? Were you sad because you had to leave your interesting friends and see me?”

“Broken-hearted,” Mitchell said.

“You’ve got such a nice, skinny face.” Ruth touched the line of his jaw. “You’re as pretty as an English lieutenant. I’m not fond of the English, but they have the prettiest lieutenants of any army.”

“We send our pretty ones to the Pacific,” said Mitchell. “Guadalcanal. We preserve them for American womanhood.”

Ruth signaled Mr. Abrams for a drink. “I was in Jerusalem today. I told my boss I was sick and went there. It’s so bad—we never got to see Jerusalem together.”

“Some other time,” Mitchell said. “I’ll come back and we’ll see Jerusalem.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Ruth said, seriously. “Please don’t lie. You won’t come back. You won’t see me again. Absolutely no lies, please.”

Mitchell felt very young. He felt there was something to be said, and an older man would know how to say it, but he felt dumb and bereaved and clumsy, and it must have showed on his face as he peered at his glass, because Ruth laughed and touched his lips with her fingers and said, “You have such a tragic face for an American. Where do you come from in America?”

“Vermont,” Mitchell said.

“Has everybody got a face like yours in Vermont?”

“Everybody.”

“I will visit there,” Ruth drained her glass, “at some later date.”

“I’ll give you my address,” Mitchell said.

“Of course,” said Ruth politely. “You must write it down some time.”

They went out into the patio and sat down at a table on the old flagstones under a palm tree, with the blue blackout lights shining dimly over the uniforms and pale dresses, and the moon riding over the Mediterranean and casting flickering shadows over the dancers who now claimed the spot where the German consul had lived well in days gone by. Mitchell ordered champagne because it was his last night. It was Syrian champagne, but not bad, and to both of them it gave an air of festivity and importance to the evening, as it rocked in its silver bucket of ice. Eric, the waiter with the limp, ceremoniously took Ruth’s ration tickets, and Schneider, seated with the drummer across the patio, with the drum dimly lit from inside by an orange light of which Schneider was very proud, played “Summertime” because he had decided that was the song Mitchell liked best. The old song, played trickily and well in the soft, echoing patio, somehow sounded, by some ineradicable stamp in Schneider’s blood, like Carolina and Vienna and the Balkans, with here and there chords of an old Hebrew chant, quite just and indigenous here between the heavy stone walls on the edge of the Sinai desert.

“I’m jealous of him,” said Ruth, speaking over the edge of her glass.

“Who?”

“Schneider.”

“Why?” Mitchell asked.

“Because of the way he looks at you. He’s crazy about you. Has he asked you to come to tea with him and his mother?”

“Yes,” said Mitchell, trying not to smile.

“I’ll tear his eyes out,” Ruth said. “I’m jealous of anybody who looks at you that way. The girls back in Vermont and those Red Cross girls.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” Mitchell said. “Nobody looks at me that way. Not even Schneider or you.”

“That’s the nicest thing about you,” Ruth said. “You don’t know anything. I’m so used to men who know just how many steps out of bed each look a woman gives them measures. I must visit America after the war.…”

“Where will you really go?” Mitchell asked. “Back to Berlin?”

“No.” Ruth stared reflectively down at her plate. “No, not back to Berlin. Never back to Berlin. The Germans have made clear their feeling about me. A little thing like a war will not change them. The lamb does not go back to the slaughterhouse. Anyway, I have nobody there. There was a young man …” She leaned over and picked up the bottle and absently poured for Mitchell and herself. “I don’t know what happened to him. Stalingrad, maybe, Alamein … who knows?”

Four men came into the patio and walked through the brief illumination of the blue lights. Three of them were Arabs in European dress, and the fourth was a man in the uniform of the American Army with the civilian technical adviser patch on his shoulder. They stopped at the table. The three Arabs bowed a little, ceremoniously, to Ruth, and the American said, “I thought you were sick.”

“This is Mr. Carver,” Ruth said to Mitchell, with a wave to the American. “He’s my boss.”