Читать книгу The Sixth of June - Lionel Shapiro - Страница 6
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ОглавлениеA MAKE-BELIEVE firmament on the arched ceiling of the Waldorf’s Starlight Roof twinkled almost as prettily as the summer sky outside and cast a mellow light on a great throng of dancers swaying to the soft rhythm of a song called “I’ll Be Seeing You.”
Uniforms of all ranks and branches abounded. Some couples, encouraged by a battery of alto saxophones, hummed the popular tune as they moved within the narrow restrictions of the overcrowded floor, and the sweet music of farewell invested their faces with an entirely touching sadness.
Jane danced closer to Brad than she would have dared in Malton. She pressed her cheek against the slightly stubbled curve of his jaw, and she enjoyed her awareness of his hard, slim body as if this were a rare and clandestine rendezvous with the man she loved. Brad responded in full measure. His fingers pressed against the nape of her neck, persuading her closer, and the rhythm of his dancing was smooth and exciting.
The saxophones faded out and a cute girl with blond upswept hair slid to the microphone on the bandstand to sing the lyric.
I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through ...
Jane whispered, “I’m glad we came.”
He said, “The show was good but this is better.”
“I think so too.”
“You never danced like this before.”
She said, “I feel sad and sort of wonderful.”
“Last time I danced this close was at Dartmouth——”
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Forgotten her name. Some chorus gal Glen Van Melder brought to a frat dance. Terrific.”
She said, “I’m not interested in your flaming youth.”
He pressed her still closer.
“Didn’t dream I’d marry someone even bitchier.”
“Brad!”
“Had to find out sometime. I’m glad we came.”
“So am I, darling.”
He wanted to remember her this way; her ardor, her decorativeness, the comfort of her. It made the leaving of her harder, and the return greatly to be wished for. Somewhere deep in his mind it compensated for this other urge to leave his set-piece civilization behind him, to plunge headlong into the war. The sweetness of this moment made it somehow easier to go.
The saxophones slid into a new and higher key, and the singer reprised the last eight bars of the song.
... I’ll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I’ll be looking at the moon
But I’ll be seeing you.
They glided to a halt and remained a moment locked in each other’s arms.
He whispered, “Will you miss me, Janie?”
She said, “I’ll manage, darling, as long as you miss me—terribly.”
It was a few minutes later that Dan Stenick broke briefly into their last evening.
They were mooning at their table in a remote corner of the crowded room when a roll of drums caught up their attention. The band leader stepped to the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, beaming, “as you have read in the papers, six members of the armed forces selected from camps all over the nation are here in New York to inaugurate the war-bond drive. We are proud and happy to have these fine young Americans as our guests tonight——” A ripple of applause rolled across the room. “If the spotlight man will be good enough to pick out table thirty-nine, I’m sure you’ll all want to give them a real big hand!” A spotlight fitfully roamed the room and came to rest on a large table decorated with flags and summer flowers. The six—an ensign, a marine, two army privates, a lieutenant, and a WAC—stood up, blinked, and sheepishly waved their hands. The room thundered with applause and cheers.
Jane touched Brad’s arm. “Isn’t that Lieutenant Stenick? It looks awfully like him.”
Brad had turned his head casually to glance at the party. Now he swung full around.
“I’ll be damned! Dan Stenick——” He chuckled richly. “Wouldn’t you just guess it, darling? About a million first louies around the country and Dan has to snag himself a trip to New York! We’ve got to get him over——” He beckoned a waiter.
Jane said indecisively, “Do you think we should?”
“Of course, Janie! We’ve got to buy him a drink. Imagine running into Dan!” He was chortling as he wrote a note on a table folder.
Of all the junior officers he had served with at Fort Harrison, only Dan Stenick had stimulated him. Dan was old for a lieutenant, thirty-two, stubby and robustly good-looking as a prize fighter (which he was for a time in the depression) might be good-looking, and he possessed a sharp intelligence and disposed so many moods and parts in such surprising profusion that he constantly intrigued all ranks up to the commanding general. Jane didn’t much care for him—for the same reasons (Brad suspected) he found him stimulating. Dan was different from anyone they had ever met. He seemed to revel in having neither background nor breeding. His life had been a patchwork of bizarre jobs, poverty, bursts of prosperity and high adventure, in the course of which he had picked up an amazing amount of knowledge on matters both scholarly and mundane. But (to Brad) nothing about him equaled in importance the wondrous fact that he was a completely free soul. He had no family he ever spoke of, his experience had taught him few scruples, his moods knew no consistency, and his spirit admitted no restraints.
His mood of the moment was clearly evident as he held aloft a whisky glass and dodged between tables toward where they sat.
“As I live and laugh,” he whooped as he came up to their table, “it’s the printer and his doll! H’ya doll!” He grabbed at Brad’s hand and at the same time planted a kiss on Jane’s cheek. “H’ya Brad! What the hell you doin’ here? I figured you over with the Limeys helpin’ Whoosenhauer or Ossenpoofer or whatever his name run our show—and here you are livin’ it up——”
Brad held up a protesting hand.
“Whoa, boy—hold it! Don’t go throwing questions at me. You’re the witness on the stand. How’s C platoon? They hit the LZ on the last jump?”
Dan shook his head soberly. “Bellenger’s got your platoon, Brad. Okay, good boy and all that, but he isn’t you, tootsie. Your boys are pinin’—hell with it. Let’s do a little drinkin’.” He drained his glass and before he had put it down he was wildly snapping his fingers for a waiter.
Brad said, “I figure out of three-four million defenders of our country you belong down around the last half dozen. How come you rate this trip?”
Dan rolled his eyes conspiratorially and brought them to rest on Jane. He said, “Confidentially, your printer husband is eminently correct. I wouldn’t have made corporal in Coxey’s army but——” He muttered to Brad in a mock whisper, “If you’ll buy me a drink, I’ll let you in on the secret. Cheap at half the price. Scotch.”
When the waiter came, Jane held her hand over her glass. Brad ordered drinks for himself and Dan.
“It’s a long story,” Dan said, “but I’ll give it to you in one pregnant sentence. I heard about the Treasury organizin’ this junket and figured I could use six pretty days in New York, all expenses paid, models provided and no holds barred for a hero, so I sat down and wrote my congressman. Get it?”
Brad said, “No, I don’t get it.”
Dan frowned. “Say doll, the printer isn’t very bright tonight. You been wearin’ him down since he got sprung from the outfit?” Jane shuddered but managed a cursory smile. She loathed being called “doll” and his oblique reference to her private life with Brad was akin to Japanese torture which she accepted as part of her war sacrifice. Brad had long since become hardened to the consequences of having a wife as decorative as Jane living with him on a military post.
“It’s this way,” Dan went on, swinging around to Brad. “My congressman’s a real combination—native intelligence of Barney Baruch and moral fiber of Al Capone. He’s got bodies buried everywhere. What’s more important, he knows that I know, so what’s a little thing like callin’ up some joker in the Treasury and droppin’ a little word in favor of a hero, name of Dan Stenick? Now you get it?”
The drinks had come. Brad lifted his and said, “No question about it, Danny boy. Someday you’re going to make a great politician.”
“And to you, kiddo. Turns out you didn’t do so bad yourself.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“What the hell. Let’s do a little drinkin’.” He waved his glass. “Happy landings!”
“What do you mean, Dan?”
Dan hesitated. Then he sang out, “Okay, but the doll will have to excuse us.” He cupped his hand around Brad’s ear and whispered swiftly, “We’re droppin’, brother. Next month. The real thing. Don’t know where yet but I figure the Aleutians. Place called Adak. Now for Christ’s sake, forget it.” He turned to Jane. “Okay, doll. Everythin’s fixed. Let’s start livin’ it up again. Dance, sweetheart?”
She said, “Sorry, Dan. I’ve only got a dance or two left in me and this is Brad’s last night.” She glanced anxiously at her husband. The cleft in his chin made a deep furrow. She knew the symptom.
Dan knew it too. He swallowed his drink in big gulps, bit his lips, essayed a smile, then fell into a long silence. Suddenly he got up.
“I been thinkin’, Brad. They know what they’re doin’ down in Washington. They’re no fools. You were the best in the outfit. Real class. They need guys like you where it counts most. That’s why they reassigned you. Me? Give me two and two and I’ll come up with three and a half. Not ’cause I don’t know better, ’cause I always got to figure my percentage. Any mug can jump. That’s why the big brass reached out and grabbed you for the London job. I wanted you to know because I love you, tootsie. You don’t mind, do you, doll? G’by and God keep you. Real good.”
He ruffled Brad’s hair and, giving him no time to reply, pranced away.
Brad watched him until he was lost behind some couples coming off the dance floor.
Jane said, “Was it important?”
He wished he could tell her about his old outfit going into action. She would be more content about his reassignment to London.
He said, “There’s no telling. He was drunk.”
“You were angry for a minute.”
“No one on earth can stay angry with Dan for more than a minute. He’s quite a guy.”
She pressed across the corner of the table that separated them.
“I’m finding out you’re quite a guy too, darling.”
They finished their drinks slowly, oblivious of the festive air and the music and goings and comings of people around them. They knew the time had come to go down to their room. He signed the bill and they walked hand in hand to the elevator.
The moon over East Forty-ninth Street played around their wide-open window and cut sharply into the darkened room. Somewhere, probably still on the roof, the music of a dance band was faintly heard in counterpoint to honks of taxicab horns in the street far below.
She lay in the curve of his arm. Idly they watched the curtains billowing before a light warm breeze that penetrated the room and refreshed their bodies.
After a time she said drowsily, “Darling——”
“Yes.”
“Little confession——” She hesitated. “When I saw Sanford Jaques at the luncheon I thought you’d arranged something.”
“Arranged what?”
“And when you got so angry with Dan Stenick I thought about it again.”
“Arranged what, Janie?”
“For you to get a transfer overseas instead of staying at Fort Harrison.”
He thought, ‘She must have a lot of old Everett Bolding in her. Never loses sight of her point. Not Janie—lovely, soft Janie. She had to chase down every doubt, and know, and be reassured.’
She said, “Wasn’t it awful of me?”
“Terrible.”
“But he didn’t have anything to do with your reassignment, did he?”
The notion had never entered Brad’s mind. He vividly recalled the G-1 at Fort Harrison saying, “We’re sorry to lose you, Parker. Real sorry. And it’s my own fault. I laid it on too thick on the staff side in your fitness report. Unfortunately it happens that General Eisenhower’s real hungry for staff, especially junior staff, in this new London setup of his. You were a sitting duck for those War Department sharpshooters when they riffled through our fitness reports. Guess I’d better start lying if I want to keep this outfit together.”
He said, “No, Janie, he had nothing to do with it.”
“Forgive me, darling?”
“Forgiven.”
After a time she murmured, “I’m heavy on your arm, dear. Come down here with me.”
Her breathing became measured. His urge for sleep seemed to have fled. He listened to the subdued cacophony of early morning in Manhattan. He had been lucky. He was going to London instead of Adak. It was a pity in a way; he honestly believed his platoon was the best in the outfit; he would have liked to jump with it in action at least once. But going to war was to him more than going into battle. It meant people and emotions, a civilization in turmoil. There were probably only a few Eskimos in Adak; no emotions, no civilization in turmoil. London! London! He warmed to the thought of tomorrow and the plane to Britain. He had wanted so much to go all his life. He had planned it for their honeymoon. But they married in July of 1939 and the papers were filled with stories of American tourists scrambling for cattle-boat space to flee the European crisis. He had said to Janie, “Let’s go anyway. I don’t think war’s going to happen. Even if it does, we’re Americans, we’re neutrals, we’ll get out of it. And what an adventure to remember the rest of our lives—to be caught in a war on our honeymoon! What do you say, Janie?” She had been willing, but their mothers were aghast and Damien adamant, and they went to the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec. Then in 1940 when bombs were falling on London and people in Malton were saying how gosh-darned lucky they were to be Americans, he sat listening on the radio to the sound of bombs and Edward R. Murrow deeply intoning, “This is London——” and Quentin Reynolds making frolic and excitement out of bravery and death, and he yearned to be there, bombs and all.
Now he was on his way. He was going to miss Janie, but there was no connection between this strange elation and Janie. It was possible to be faithful to both dreams.
He felt her hair brush across his ear.
“Brad——”
He whispered, “Shhh. Go to sleep.”
“Brad, I forgot something.”
“It can wait.”
“No,” she mumbled, half asleep.
He said nothing.
“Brad, I forgot to give you your present.”
“In the morning.”
“No. Now. Must, simply must.”
She heaved a deep, weary sigh and pushed the sheet aside. She groped at the foot of the bed for her negligee and swung her feet to the floor. More asleep than awake she maneuvered across the room to a dressing table. When she returned she handed him a tiny box.
“Open it, darling.” She dropped her negligee on the floor and crawled under the sheet.
It was a round gold medallion glittering on a thin gold chain.
“Can you see what it says?”
He dangled the medallion until it caught the flooding moonlight. Engraved on the face of it were two semicircular arrows, each pursuing the other to make a perfect circle. Inside the circle were their names, “Brad and Janie.”
“Can you make it out, darling?”
“Yes, Janie. It’s a lovely thing.”
“It’s for your dog tags. Let me put it on you.”
She unclasped the steel cord he wore, removed the identification discs, slipped them on the gold chain and hooked it around his neck. “There,” she said, and slid deep into the bed.
He kissed her.
She said, “Promise me something.”
“What, darling?”
“Never take it off.”
“Never?”
“Not until I take it off myself the first night you come back. Promise.”
A sense of premonition gripped him. He looked at the medallion and at her tousled head half buried in a pillow, and he wondered what myriad and measureless moments, what tests and dangers and challenges must pass behind him before they might come together again.
“Promise, Brad.”
“I promise.”
She sighed contentedly and shifted toward him and soon her breath blew warm and even against his shoulder.
