The Young Lions (33 page)

The waiter's face quivered, and Michael could almost hear him saying unhappily to himself, "Ah, here is another one who is blaming me for Mussolini. This war, oh, this sickness of a war."

"Yes, Sir," the waiter said, smiling, "it is possible that you are right." He backed away, trying to disclaim, by the tortured small movements of his hands and the sorrowful upper lip, that he had any responsibility for the Italian Army, the Italian Fleet, the Italian Air Force.

"Well?" Peggy said loudly.

Michael sipped his brandy slowly, in silence.

"O.K.," said Peggy. "I catch on."

"I just don't see the sense," Michael said, "of getting married now."

"You're absolutely right," Peggy said. "It's just that I'm tired of seeing single men get killed."

"Peggy." Michael covered her hand softly with his. "This isn't at all like you."

"Perhaps it is," said Peggy. "Perhaps all the other times weren't like me. Don't think," she said coldly, "you're going to come back in five years with all your medals and find me waiting for you, with a welcoming smile on my face."

"O.K.," Michael said wearily. "Let's not talk about it."

"I'm going to talk about it," Peggy said.

"O.K.," said Michael. "Talk about it."

He could see her fighting back tears as her face dissolved and softened. "I was going to be very gay," she said, her voice trembling. "Going to war? Let's have a drink… I would've managed, too, but that damned sailor… The trouble is, I'm going to forget you. There was another man, in Austria, and I thought I'd remember him till the day I died. He was probably a better man than you, too, braver and more gentle, and a cousin of his wrote to me last year from Switzerland that they'd killed him in Vienna. I was going to the theatre with you the night I got the letter, and first I thought, 'I can't go out tonight,' but then you were at the door and I looked at you and I didn't really remember the other man at all. He was dead, but I didn't remember very much about him, although at one time I asked him to marry me, too. I seem to have terrible luck in that department, don't I?"

"Stop it," Michael whispered, "please, Peggy, stop it."

But Peggy went on, the mist of tears barely held back in the deep remembering eyes. "I'm silly," she said. "I'd probably have forgotten him even if we had been married, and I'd probably forget you, if you stayed away long enough. Probably just a superstition on my part. I guess I feel if you're married and it's there, all settled and official, to come home to, you'll come home. Ridiculous… His name was Joseph. He had no home, nothing. So, naturally, they killed him." She stood up abruptly. "Wait for me outside," she said. "I'll be right down."

She fled out of the small, dark room with the little bar near the window and the old-fashioned maps of the wine sections of France hung around the smoky walls. Michael left some money on the table for the bill, and a big tip to try to make up to the Italian waiter for being rude to him, and walked slowly out into the street.

He stood in front of the restaurant, thoughtfully smoking a cigarette. No, he thought finally, no. She's wrong. I'm not going to carry that burden, too, or let her carry it, either. If she was going to forget him, that was merely another price you paid for the war, another form of casualty. It was not entered on the profit-and-loss balances of men killed and wounded and treasure destroyed, but it was just as surely a casualty. It was hopeless and crippling to try to fight it.

Peggy came out. Her hair shone in the sun as though she had combed it violently upstairs, and her face was composed and smiling.

"Forgive me," she said, touching his arm. "I'm just as surprised by it as you are."

"That's all right," Michael said. "I'm no prize today myself."

"I didn't mean a word of what I said. You believe that, don't you?"

"Of course," said Michael.

"Some other time," Peggy said, "I'll tell you about the man in Vienna. It's an interesting story. Especially for a soldier."

"Sure," said Michael politely. "I'd love to hear it."

"And now," Peggy looked up the street and waved to a taxicab that was slowly coming down from Lexington Avenue, "I think I'd better go back to work for the rest of the afternoon. Don't you?"

"There's no need…"

Peggy smiled at him. "I think it's a good idea," she said.

"Then tonight, we'll meet as though we never had lunch today at all. I'd prefer it that way. You can find plenty of things to do this afternoon, can't you?"

"Of course," Michael said.

"Have a good time, darling." She kissed him lightly. "And wear your grey suit tonight." She got into the cab without looking back and the car drove off. Michael watched it turn the corner and then he walked slowly west on the shady side of the street.

He had put off thinking about Peggy, half consciously, half unconsciously. There were so many other things to think about. The war made a miser out of a man, he saved all his emotions for it. But that was no excuse, either. He still wanted to postpone thinking about her. He knew himself too well to imagine that for two, three, four years he could remain faithful to a photograph, a letter a month, a memory… And he didn't want to make any claims on her. They were two sensible, forthright, candid people, and here was a problem that millions of people all around them were facing one way or another, and they couldn't handle it any better than the youngest, the most naive, the most illiterate backwoodsman come down from his hills to pick up a rifle, leaving his Cora Sue behind him… He knew that they wouldn't talk about it any more, either that night or any night before the end of the war, but he knew that in the nights of memory and recapitulation ahead of him, on continents he had never travelled before, he would suffer as he thought of this early summer afternoon and a voice would cry within him, "Why didn't you do it? Why not? Why not?"

THE General had come down to inspect the line, exuding confidence, so they all knew something was up. Even the Italian General in the party of ten bulky, binoculared, goggled, scarved, glittering officers had exuded confidence, so they knew it was something big. The General had been particularly hearty, laughing uproariously when he talked to the soldiers, patting them heavily on the shoulder, even pinching the cheek of an eighteen-year-old boy who had just come up as a replacement in Himmler's squad. This was a certain sign that a great many men were going to be killed, one way or another, very soon.

There were other signs, too. Himmler, who had been at Divisional Headquarters two days ago, had heard on the radio that the British had been burning papers again at their headquarters in Cairo. The British seemed to have an unlimited number of papers to burn. They had burned them in July, and then again in August, and here it was October, and they were still burning them.

Himmler had also heard the man on the radio say that the overall strategy was for them to break through to Alexandria and Jerusalem and finally to join up with the Japanese in India. It was true that this seemed a little grandiose and ambitious to men who had been sitting in the same place in the bitter sun for months, but there was a reassuring sound to the plan. At least it gave evidence that the General had a plan.

The night was very quiet. Occasionally there was a random small rattle of fire, or a flare, but that was all. There was a moon and the pale sky, crusted with the mild glitter of the stars, blended gently with the shadowy expanse of the desert.

Christian stood alone, loosely holding the machine-pistol in the crook of his arm, looking out towards the anonymous shadows behind which lay the enemy. There was no sound from them in the sleeping night, and no sound from the thousands of men all about him.

Night had its advantages. You could move about quite freely, without worrying that some Englishman had you in his glasses and was debating with himself whether or not you were worth a shell or two. Also, the smell died down. The smell was the salient fact about war in the desert. There was not enough water for anything but drinking, and not enough for that, so nobody washed. You sweated all day, in the same clothes, week in and week out, and your clothes rotted with it, and became stiff on your back, and you had a steady rash of prickly heat that itched and burned, but your nose suffered worst of all. The human race was only bearable when the obscene juices of living were being constantly washed away. You became dulled to your own smell, of course, otherwise you would kill yourself, but when you joined any group, the smell hit you, in a solid, jolting attack.

So the night was solace. There had been little enough solace since he had arrived in Africa. They had been winning, it was true, and he had marched from Bardia to this spot, some seventy miles from Alexandria. But somehow, while agreeable, victory did not have a personal quality to a soldier in the line. No doubt victory meant a great deal to the well-uniformed officers at the various headquarters and they probably celebrated over large dinners with wines and beer when towns were taken, but victories for you still meant that there was a good chance that you would die in the morning, and that you would still live in a shallow, gritty hole.

The only good time had been the two weeks in Cyrene, when he had been sent back with malaria. It had been cooler there, and green, and there was swimming in the Mediterranean.

When Himmler had reported that he had heard the expert on the radio announce that the plan of the German General Staff was to go through Alexandria and Cairo to join up in India with the Japanese, Knuhlen, who had come out with a recent draft of replacements, and who had taken over some of Himmler's old position of comedian to the company, had said, "Anybody who wants can go and join up with the Japs. Myself, if nobody minds, I'll stop in Alexandria."

Christian grinned in the darkness as he remembered Knuhlen's rough witticism. There are probably few jokes, he thought, being told tonight on the other side of the minefield.

Then there was the flash for a hundred miles, and a second later, the sound. He fell to the sand, just as the shells exploded all around him.

He opened his eyes. It was dark, but he knew he was moving and he knew that he was not alone, because there was the smell. The smell was like clotted wounds and the winter clothes of the children of the poor. He remembered the sound of the shells over his head, and he closed his eyes again.

It was a truck. There was no doubt about that. And somewhere the war was still on, because there was the sound of artillery, going and coming, not very far off. And something bad had happened, because a voice in the darkness near him was weeping and saying between sobs, "My name is Richard Knuhlen, my name is Richard Knuhlen," over and over again, as though the man were trying to prove to himself that he was a normal fellow who knew exactly who he was and what he was doing.

Christian stared up in the opaque darkness at the heavy-smelling canvas that swayed and jolted above him. The bones of his arms and legs felt as though they had been broken. His ears felt smashed against his head, and for a while he lay on the board floor in the complete blackness contemplating the fact that he was going to die.

"My name is Richard Knuhlen," the voice said, "and I live at Number Three, Carl Ludwigstrasse. My name is Richard Knuhlen and I live at…"

"Shut up," Christian said, and immediately felt much better. He even tried to sit up, but that was too ambitious, and he lay back again, to watch the sky-rocketing waves of colour under his eyelids.

The barrage had been bad the first night, but everyone was fairly well dug in, and only Meyer and Heiss had been hit. There had been flares and searchlights and the light of a tank burning behind them, and small petrol fires before them where the Tommies were trying to mark a path through the minefield for the tanks and infantry behind the barrage, small dark figures appearing in sudden flashes, busily jumping around so far away. Their own guns had started in behind them. Only one tank had got close. Every gun within a thousand metres of them had opened up on it. When the hatch was opened a minute later they saw with surprise that the man who tried to climb out was burning brightly.

The whole attack on their sector, after the barrage died down, had only lasted two hours, three waves with nothing more to show for it than seven immobile tanks, charred, with broken treads, at aggressive angles in the sand, and many bodies strewn peacefully around them. Everybody had been pleased. They had only lost five men in the company, and Hardenburg had grinned widely when he went back to battalion to report in the quiet of the morning.

But at noon the guns had started on them again, and what looked like a whole company of tanks had appeared in the minefield, jiggling uncertainly in the swirling dust and sand. This, time the line had been overrun, but the British infantry had been stopped before it reached them, and what was left of the tanks had pulled back, turning maliciously from time to time to rake them before rumbling out of range. But before they could take a deep breath, the British artillery had opened up again. It had caught the medical parties out in the open, tending the wounded. They were all screaming and dying and no one could leave his hole to help them. That was probably when Knuhlen had begun to cry and Christian remembered thinking dazedly and somehow surprised: They are very serious about this.

Then he had begun to shake. He had braced himself crazily with his hands rigid against the sides of the hole he was in. When he looked over the rim of the hole there seemed to be thousands of Tommies running at him and blowing up on mines, and those little bug-like gun carriers scurrying around them in eccentric lines, their machine-guns going, and he had felt like standing up and saying, "You are making a serious mistake. I am suffering from malaria and I am sure you would not like to be guilty of killing an invalid."

It went on for many days and nights, with the fever coming and going, and the chills in the middle of the desert noon, and from time to time you thought with dull hostility: They never told you it could last so long and they never told you you would have malaria while it was happening.