Part 13 (1/2)
- Quit it, for G.o.d's sake. Leave it alone. Let me like you a little bit.
- I don't want you to like me. In a half-whisper she said, I want you to curse me.
- Keep it up.
- It's so sweet, she said. The little family, the lovely books. All right, then. You missed your chance. Bye-bye. Go back and give her a bath, your little girl. While you still can, anyway.
She looked at him a last time from the doorway. He could hear the sound of her heels as she went through the front room. He could hear them go past the display cases and toward the door where they seemed to hesitate, then the door closing.
The room was swimming, he could not hold on to his thoughts. The past, like a sudden tide, had swept back over him, not as it had been but as he could not help remembering it. The best thing was to resume work. He knew what her skin felt like, it was silky. He should not have listened.
On the soft, silent keys he began to write: Jack Kerouac, typed letter signed (”Jack”), 1 page, to his girlfriend, the poet Lois Sorrells, single-s.p.a.ced, signed in pencil, slight crease from folding. It was not a pretend life.
Arlington.
NEWELL HAD MARRIED a Czech girl and they were having trouble, they were drinking and fighting. This was in Kaiserslautern and families in the building had complained. Westerveldt, who was acting adjutant, was sent to straighten things out-he and Newell had been cla.s.smates, though Newell was not someone in the cla.s.s you remembered. He was quiet and kept to himself. He had an odd appearance, with a high, domed forehead and pale eyes. Jana, the wife, had a downturned mouth and nice b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Westerveldt didn't really know her. He knew her by sight.
Newell was in the living room when Westerveldt came by. He seemed unsurprised by the visit.
- I thought I might talk to you a little, Westerveldt said.
There was a slight nod.
- Is your wife here?
- I think she's in the kitchen.
- It's not really my business, but are the two of you having problems?
Newell seemed to be considering.
- Nothing serious, he finally said.
In the kitchen the Czech wife had her shoes off and was painting her toenails. She looked up briefly when Westerveldt came in. He saw the exotic, European mouth.
- I wonder if we could talk for a minute.
- About what? she said. There was uneaten food on the counter and unwashed dishes.
- Why don't you come into the living room?
She said nothing.
- Just for a couple of minutes.
She looked closely at her feet, ignoring him. Westerveldt had grown up with three sisters and was at ease around women. He touched her elbow to coax her but she jerked it away.
- Who are you? she said.
Westerveldt went back into the living room and talked to Newell like a brother. If this went on with him and his wife, it was jeopardizing his career.
Newell wanted to confide in Westerveldt. He sat silent, however, unable to begin. He was helplessly in love with this woman. When she dressed up she was simply beautiful. If you saw them together in the Wienerstube, his round white brow gleaming in the light and her across from him, smoking, you would wonder, how did he ever get her? She was insolent but there were times when she was not. To put your hand on the small of her naked back was to have all you ever hoped to possess.
- What is it that's bothering her? Westerveldt wanted to know.
- She's had a terrible life, Newell said. Everything will be all right.
Whatever else was said, Westerveldt didn't remember. What happened afterward erased it.
Newell was away on temporary duty somewhere and his wife, who had no friends, was bored. She went to the movies and wandered around in town. She went to the officers' club and sat at the bar, drinking. On Sat.u.r.day she was there, bare shouldered, still drinking when the bar closed. The club officer, Captain Dardy, noticed it and asked if she needed someone to drive her home. He told her to wait a few minutes until he was finished closing up.
Early in the morning, in the gray light, Dardy's car was still parked outside the quarters. Jana could see it and so could everyone else. She leaned over and shook him and told him he had to leave.
- What time is it?
- I don't care. You have to go, she said.
Afterward she went to the military police and reported she had been raped.
IN HIS LONG, ADMIRED CAREER, Westerveldt had been like a figure in a novel. In the elephant gra.s.s near Pleiku he'd gotten a wide scar through one eyebrow where a mortar fragment, half an inch lower and a little closer, would have blinded or killed him. If anything, it enhanced his appearance. He'd had a long love affair with a woman in Naples when he'd been stationed there, a marquesa, in fact. If he resigned his commission and married her, she would buy him whatever he wanted. He could even have a mistress. That was just one episode. Women always liked him. In the end he married a woman from San Antonio, a divorcee with a child, and they had two more together. He was fifty-eight when he died from some kind of leukemia that began as a strange rash on his neck.
The chapel, an ordinary room with red wallpaper and benches, in the funeral home was crowded. Someone was delivering a eulogy, but in the corridor where many people stood it was hard to make out.
- Can you hear what he's saying?
- n.o.body can, the man in front of Newell said. It was Bressi, he realized, Bressi with his hair now white.
- Are you going to the cemetery? Newell asked when the service was over.
- I'll give you a ride, Bressi told him.
They drove through Alexandria, the car full.
- There's the church that George Was.h.i.+ngton attended when he was president, Bressi said. A little later, he said, There's Robert E. Lee's boyhood home.
Bressi and his wife lived in Alexandria in a white clapboard house with a narrow front porch and black shutters.
- Who said, ”Let us cross the river and rest in the shade of the trees”? he asked them.
No one answered. Newell felt their disdain for him. They were looking away, out the car windows.
- Anybody know? Bressi said. Lee's greatest tactical commander.
- Shot by his own men, Newell said, almost inaudibly.