The Naked and the Dead (44 page)

            "What are you. . . Si
cill?"
Polack asked Minetta. They were trudging along together through the sand. Minetta with a grunt dropped his ration box on a new pile they were starting. "No, Ven
eetz,"
he said. "My grandfather was a big shot, you know, an aristocrat near Venice." They turned around to go back to the landing craft. "How do you know that stuff?" Minetta asked Polack.

            "Aaah, what do ya t'ink?" Polack said. "I lived with a bunch of dagoes. I know more about 'em than you do."

            "No, you don't," Minetta said. "Listen, I wouldn't tell anybody this, 'cause you know how guys are, they'll think you're handing them a line of crap, but you can believe me, this is the truth, honest. We were really society, nobility, back in the old country. My father never did a day's work in his life, all he'd ever do was go hunting. We had a regular estate."

            "Yeah."

            "You think I'm kidding you. Look, look at me. You see, I don't look like an Italian, I got light-brown hair and light skin. You ought to see the rest of my family, they're all blond, I'm the black sheep. That's how you tell the aristocrats, they got light complexions. This town we come from is named after one of my ancestors, the Duke of Minetta."

            Polack sat down. "What're we breaking our asses for, let's take it easy."

            Minetta continued talking eagerly. "Listen, I know you don't believe me, but you ever get to New York and look me up, I'll show you some of the family medals. My father's always taking them out to show us. My aching back, he's got a whole boxful of them."

            Croft passed by them, and called over his shoulder. "All right, troopers, let's quit fuggin the dog."

            Polack sighed and got to his feet. "I'll tell you what, there ain't no future in this. What's it to Croft if we take it easy?"

            "That guy is stripe-happy," Minetta said.

            "They're all that way," Polack answered. He pronounced "that" as "dat."

            Minetta nodded. "Jus' let me meet up with one of those guys after the war."

            "What'll you do, buy Croft a drink?"

            "You think I'm scared of him?" Minetta said. "Listen, I been in the Golden Gloves, I ain't afraid of any of these guys." Polack's grin irritated him.

            "The only guy you could take is Roth," Polack said.

            "Aaah, fug you, there's no use talkin' to you."

            "I'm too ignorant."

            They lifted two boxes from the pile in the boat, and began to walk back to the supply dump. "Boy, I can't stand this," Minetta burst out angrily. "I'm losing all my ambition."

            "Aaah."

            "You think I'm just a fug-off, don't you?" Minetta asked. "You ought to seen me back when I was a civilian. I knew how to dress, I had an interest in life, I was always the leader in everything I did. I could be a noncom now if I wanted to buck for stripes, suck the way Stanley does, but it ain't worth it. You got your self-respect."

            "What do ya get worked up for?" Polack asked. "You know I was makin' a hundred fifty a week, and I had my own car. I was in with Lefty Rizzo, but 'in.' There wasn't a dame in the world I couldn't make, models, actresses, good-lookin' twots. And all I'd work would be twenty hours a week, no, wait it was twenty-five, about four hours a night from five to nine, six nights a week, just collectin' the receipts from the numbers and turnin' them in. You hear me bitchin' now? Listen, it's all in the turn of the cards," Polack said, "all in the turn. The way to figure it is you're layin' low now, you're takin' it easy."

            Polack was about twenty-one, Minetta figured. He wondered if he was lying about the money. It always made Minetta uncomfortable to realize that he never knew what went on in Polack's head, while Polack always seemed to guess what he was thinking about. Not knowing what to answer, he attacked Polack. "Just laying low, huh? You got in the Army 'cause you wanted to?"

            "How do you know I couldn'ta stayed out?"

            Minetta snorted. "I know it 'cause nobody who's got a brain in their head would go in unless they had to." He dumped his box on top of some others, and started back to the boats. "You're out on a limb when you get stuck in the Army. They ain't a damn thing you can do if somethin' happens to ya. Look at Gallagher. Poor bastard's wife dies, and he's stuck out here."

            Polack grinned. "You want to know why Gallagher feels bad?"

            "I know."

            "No, you don't. There was a cousin of mine whose wife got killed in an accident. Jesus, you shoulda seen the way he carried on. For what? For a dame? I tried to talk to him, I said to him, 'Listen, what the hell are you lettin' go all that water for? There's lots of dames. In six mont's you'll be shackin' up again an' you won't even remember what this one looked like.' He looks at me and starts bawlin', 'Oh, oh, oh,' and I try to tell him again. So what does he say to me?" Polack paused.

            "All right, what?"

            "He says, 'Six mont's hell, what am I gonna do for tonight?' "

            In spite of himself, Minetta laughed. "You expect me to believe that?"

            Polack shrugged, and picked up a box. "What do I care if ya believe it. I'm tellin' ya, that's all." He began to walk. "Hey, you know what time it is?"

            "Two o'clock."

            Polack sighed. "Two more hours of this crap." He trudged through the sand. "Wait, I'll tell ya about this dame that wrote a book," he said.

            At three o'clock the platoon took its last break of the afternoon. Stanley sprawled out on the sand beside Brown and offered him a cigarette. "Go ahead, you might as well take one, I'm supporting you on cigarettes anyway."

            Brown groaned, stretching his arms. "I'm getting old. I'll tell you what, a man can't do the kind of work he's capable of out in this tropical heat."

            "Why don't you just admit you're goofing off?" A change had come about in Stanley's attitude toward Brown since he had made corporal. He no longer agreed with Brown completely, and he bantered with him much more frequently. "You'll be like Roth in another week," he said.

            "Up yours."

            "It's all right, sergeant, I'm on to you." Stanley had not noticed the change in himself. During the first months he had been in the platoon he had been painfully alert, he had never said anything without thinking or feeling what its purpose would be, he had selected his friendships with care, and he had felt his way through the filter of Brown's likes and dislikes. Without ever analyzing it carefully, he had subtly formed Brown's attitude toward men about whom Brown originally had not much opinion. In turn Stanley found it politic to like the men of whom Brown spoke approvingly. Yet he never phrased all this to himself; he knew he had wanted to make corporal, but he never admitted it to himself. He merely obeyed the hints and the anxieties that his mind generated in relation with Brown.

            Brown had understood him, had laughed at him secretly, but Brown ended by recommending him for corporal. Without realizing it, Brown had found himself dependent on Stanley, warmed by his admiration and respect, by his complete interest in everything Brown had to say. Brown had always thought, Stanley's brown-nosing me, and I'm on to him, yet when Croft had talked to him about making a corporal, Brown had been unable to think of anyone but Stanley. There were objections to all the others; he had forgotten the source of his contempt for some of the other men they were considering, but it had been originated by Stanley. To his surprise, he had found himself praising Stanley to Croft.

            Afterward, as Stanley grew accustomed to giving orders, the change became apparent. His voice developed authority, he began to bully the men who displeased him, and he approached Brown with easy familiarity. Again, without ever thinking of it articulately, he knew that Brown could not help him any longer; he would remain a corporal until one of the sergeants was wounded or killed. At first he had continued to show deference to Brown, continued to agree with him, but he had become conscious of his hypocrisy, a little uncomfortable with it. Now he noticed when Brown was obviously inaccurate. He began to state his own opinions. In time he had begun to boast.

            Now Stanley exhaled leisurely, and repeated, "Yep, you're getting just like Roth." Brown made no answer, and Stanley spat. "I'll tell you something about that Roth," he said. His speech had become declarative like Brown's. "He really don't mean so bad, it's just he ain't got any guts. He's the kind of guy that always ends up a failure 'cause he ain't willing to take chances."

            "Don't kid yourself, boy," Brown told him. "They ain't many men want to take chances when it's a case of stopping a bullet."

            "Naw, I don't mean that," Stanley said. "You can see the way he was in civilian life. He wanted to get ahead just like you and me, but he didn't have the guts to stick to something. He was too cautious. You got to be a smart apple if you want to live big."

            "What the hell'd you ever do?" Brown asked.

            "I've taken my chances, and got away with them too."

            Brown laughed. "Yeah, fugged a dame when her husband was out."

            Stanley spat again. It was a habit he had assimilated from Croft. "I'm going to tell you something. Just after Ruthie and me got hitched, we had a chance to buy some furniture from a guy who was movin' out of the state, and it was one hell of a buy, only he wanted cash. I didn't have it, and my old man didn't have it just then. For about three hundred bucks we could get a whole living room that must have been worth a thousand new. You know, you invite people over, it makes an impression. What do you think I did, folded my hands, and said it's a shame, and let the thing go? Hell, no, I didn't. I took the money from the garage I was working at."

            "What do ya mean ya took the money?"

            "Oh, it wasn't so hard, if you watched the angles. I was the bookkeeper there and we were taking in a thousand dollars a day in repairs. It was a big garage. I just took the money out of the till, and I held over to the next day the Work Completed slips on three cars which had repairs totaling up to the three hundred bucks. Those cars had gone out that afternoon, and I had to hold them over in the books so the receipts for that day on work completed and paid for wouldn't show a hole. Then the next day I checked them out in the books and held over another three C's worth."

            "How long did ya do it for?" Brown asked.

            "For two whole weeks, how do ya like that? There was a couple of days when we only had a couple of cars being paid for, and I was sweating blood 'cause by the time I took out the three hundred there wasn't much left. Of course I carried over the receipts from the day before that I didn't credit, but there was so few cars it would have showed up kind of funny if anyone had looked at the books that day."

            "Well, how'd you get out of it?" Brown asked.

            "This'll kill ya. After we bought the furniture I took out a loan for three hundred with that as security, and then I just slipped the three hundred back in a couple of days, and paid off the loan in monthly payments. But I had the furniture dirt-cheap. And maybe it didn't make some good impression on people. I never woulda had it, if I didn't take the chance."

            "That was pretty good," Brown admitted. He was impressed; this was a facet of Stanley about which he had been ignorant.

            "It took a lot to do it, I'll tell ya," Stanley said. He was remembering the nights he had lain awake worrying during those two weeks. He had suffered from any number of fears which attacked him in the night. His manipulations had become confused and impossible in the black hours of the morning; he would go over and over in his mind the changes he had made in the books and they would seem in error to him; he would become convinced he would be discovered the next day. He would try to concentrate, and find himself repeating an addition in his mind over and over again. "Eight plus thirty-five makes. . . makes. . . eight plus thirty-five makes three and carry one. . ." His stomach had become upset, and he could hardly eat any food. There would be times when he woud lie sweating in his bed, completely conquered by despair and anxiety. He wondered that everyone did not know what he was doing.

            His love-making had suffered. He had been just eighteen when he married a few weeks before, and in his inexperience he had been inept, incapable of controlling himself. His love spasms had been quick and nervous; he had wept once or twice in his wife's arms at his failure. He had married so young because he was in love, but also because he had felt cocky and confident. People always told him that he looked old for his age, and he believed in gambling, in assuming burdens because he was confident of carrying them. He had bought the furniture for the same reason and, in his anxiety over that, the demands of his marriage had been overwhelming, and his failure in one had fed on his anxiety in the other.

            After he replaced the money, his love-making became a little more accomplished but he always lacked a necessary confidence in it; unconsciously he had longed for the days before his marriage when he had necked with his wife for long passionate hours. Stanley, however, showed very little of this; he never told his wife just how the furniture was bought, and in their coupling he would feign great passion until he began to believe it himself. He had passed on from the garage to an accountant's office, where he worked as a clerk while he studied accounting in night school. He learned other ways of making money, and he conceived their child deliberately. He had new money worries, and more nights when he lay motionless and perspiring in his bed trying to see the ceiling in the darkness. But in the morning he would always be confident and the chances would seem worth the taking.