War and Remembrance (36 page)

The departure date of the American internees in Siena has been fixed for the first week in May. We are to proceed to Naples or Lisbon, embark in a Swedish luxury liner, and sail for home. On the first of April (I remember noting that it was April Fool’s Day!) my old friend, the Siena chief of police,
paid me a visit. With many a Tuscan sigh and shrug and circumlocution, he hinted that for us there might be a hitch. He would not elaborate.

Detailed word came within a few days, in a letter from our embassy in Rome. The nub of the matter is this: the Nazis claim that three Italian journalists, interned in Rio de Janeiro and awaiting trial as German agents in disguise, are in fact
bona fide
journalists, barbarously detained by the Brazilian authorities at Allied instigation. In retaliation, since the Germans can lay their hands on few Brazilians, they have asked the Italians to detain three Americans so as to force our State Department to persuade Brazil to set these men free. It is just crude Teutonism, of course, a game to recover clumsy spies who got themselves caught. Unhappily, the three hostages, if it comes to that, may be myself, my niece, and her baby, since our “journalist” credentials are marginal, to say the least. The international dickering has, in fact, already begun, and we are among those marked for possible detention. So the embassy has disclosed.

But that it will happen is unlikely. Brazil will probably bow to the intercession of our State Department. Then again, our friend and rescuer, Dr. Werner Beck, is moving heaven and earth to get us released, or at the very least, to designate three other Americans from the list for the retaliation, if it comes to that. Probably I should not let him do this, but I have learned already to turn feral in wartime.
Sauve qui peut
is the cry.

I have concealed this news from Natalie. Her dread of the Germans and what they may do to her baby borders on the psychotic. As for me, I am not alarmed. I would just as lief work on here to the last, and — when the worst befalls and however it befalls — have my ashes scattered in the garden. For one way or another, my time of ash is not far off. I cannot say how I know this. My health is fair. Nevertheless I do know it. It neither frightens nor saddens me. It strengthens my resolve to wring all the work I can out of the passing days, and finish my
Luther.

For Natalie’s sake, however, I must do all I can to ensure that we will go. Upon completing my morning’s work, I shall go and have a word with the archbishop. He is not without influence in the Italian Foreign Ministry. The time has come to pull every string, and turn over every stone.

T
HE
red beard scratched and tickled Janice Henry’s cheek. She hugged Byron a shade tighter than family affection called for, thinking that he had been out on that submarine a pretty long time. Too, though incest was as far from her thoughts as parricide, she did feel — she always had — a mild fugitive attraction to Warren’s younger brother. She didn’t mind the rum reek on his breath, nor the grease streaks on his rumpled khakis, for she knew that he had come straight from the victory celebration of the
Devilfish.
A double frangipani lei, heavily and sweetly odorous, dangled around his sunburned throat.

“Well!” She touched the beard. “Are you going to keep that?”

“Why not?” He took off the lei and hung it around her neck.

Flustered, sniffing at the flowers, she said, “I feel so dumb about your phone call. You and he do sound alike, you know.”

Janice had begun blurting a sexy wife-to-husband greeting on hearing his voice. “Look, it’s Byron,” he had interrupted, and after an embarrassed pause they had both roared with laughter.

Byron shyly grinned. “Expecting Warren, were you?”

“Well, the scuttlebutt is that Halsey’s due back with the carriers.”

“Minus the
Lex,
I hear.”

“Minus the
Lex.”
She shook her head sadly. “Sunk in the Coral Sea. That’s definite.”

“Where’s my nephew?”

“In the nursery. Bathed, fed, sleepy, smelling like a rose.”

“More than you can say for me, I guess.” Byron did, in fact, smell rather gamy. “We just piled off the boat and started celebrating — hi, Vic. Holy cow, Janice,” Byron called from the nursery, “he’s gigantic.”

“Don’t rouse him. He’ll give us no peace.”

Byron strolled into the kitchen after a while and dropped on a chair. “Marvelous kid,” he said, with a faraway look. He sounded doleful.

Janice crouched at the stove in an apron, a shirt, and shorts, the pink lei hanging loose. She pushed heavy yellow hair away from her face. “Sorry I’m such a mess. Seems I never dress up any more. Warren’s so seldom home.”

“I’d call Washington,” Byron said, “but it’s midnight there. I’ll call in the morning. Natalie and my kid are interned in Italy, I suppose you know that.”

“Briny, they’re out.”

“What! They
are?”
Byron sprang joyfully to his feet. “Jan! How do you know?”

“I talked to my father in Washington — oh, three, four days ago. He’s been keeping after the State Department about it.”

“But, was he positive?”

“Yes, there’s this Swedish liner en route from Lisbon with the interned Americans. She’s aboard with her baby.”

“Fantastic!” He seized Janice and hugged and kissed her. “Maybe I’ll telephone him.”

“He’s left there. He’s a brigadier general, assigned to MacArthur’s staff in Australia. You can talk to him when he passes through here, probably Saturday.”

“Oh, Lord, how I’ve waited for this news!”

“I’ll bet. Some reunion coming up, eh?” Her grin was sly as he released her. “How much time did you two have on your honeymoon, three days?”

“Less. Dunno about the reunion, though.” He dropped in the chair again. “Aster wants me to stick with the
Devilfish.
Most of our squadron’s been pulled back off patrol. That’s damned unusual. There’s a smell around the sub base. Something brewing.”

She gave him a worried glance. “Yes? At Cincpac, too.”

“Aster heard that the Japs are going to try to take the Hawaiian Islands. Biggest battle of the war coming up. No time for me to leave, that’s his argument.”

“Don’t you have orders to SubLant?”

“He has to detach me. I could stay aboard for the battle, if there’s one imminent. Maybe I ought to, I don’t know.”

“So Aster’s got command now?”

“Yes, it’s Captain Aster, no more Lady.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, God’s gift to women, isn’t he? And he grins like the phantom of the opera.”

That made Byron laugh. “Phantom of the opera! Not bad.”

He helped her carry food and wine out to a table of wrought iron and glass on the lanai. She lit candles, though the sunset still glowed beyond the trees. They drank California burgundy with the meat loaf she had hastily prepared. Byron emptied glass after glass as he talked about Aster’s first patrol. They had sunk two ships before the summons back to base, and Byron thought Carter Aster was going to be one of the great skippers of the war. His eyes began to gleam. “Say, Jan, can you keep a secret?”

“Indeed I can.”

“We sank a hospital ship.”

“My
God,
Byron!” She stared and gasped. “Why, that’s an atrocity, it’s — ”

“Just let me
tell
this, will you? It was the goddamnedest experience of my life. I spotted the ship myself when I had the deck, about midnight. Unescorted, floodlights on a white hull, brilliant running lights, huge red cross painted on her side. This was in the Makassar Strait off Java. Aster came topside, took one look, and ordered a dive and an approach. Well, I figured it was a practice run. But when he said,
’Open the outer doors’
I cracked. ‘Captain,’ I said, ‘is this an attack?’ He ignored me, just kept boring in. I was on the computer. At about fifteen hundred yards I had a perfect solution, but I felt guilty as hell, and the exec was just scratching his head and keeping his mouth shut. ‘Captain,’ I said, ‘this target is a hospital ship. If there’s a general court martial I’ll have to say so.’ ‘Yes, you do that, Briny. I’m going to shoot him now,’ he says, cool as a popsicle, chewing on his cigar. ‘Stand by! Up periscope. Final bearing and shoot!’ And off went four fish.”

“Byron, he’s a maniac!”

“Janice, will you listen? That baby blew up in a fireball you could see for a hundred miles! It was a disguised ammunition ship. Nothing else could have blown like that. We surfaced and watched it burn. It kept whizzing and popping and spraying fire. It took forever to sink. The fireworks just went on and on. And once it did go down, why, the sea was full of strange dark floating shapes. We hove to till dawn, and they turned out to be huge balls of crude rubber, ten or fifteen feet across. Those things were bobbing all the way to the horizon. That ship was transporting rubber from Java, honey, with a big load of ammo. Probably captured Dutch stuff.”

“How could he know that? He might have drowned two thousand wounded men.”

“He guessed right. Don’t ever repeat that story, Jan.”

“Horrors, no.”

The doorbell rang. She left the table and soon reappeared. “Speak of the devil.” Carter Aster followed her in dress whites, clean-shaven, slim and straight, cap under his arm.

“Briny, the base pool ran out of jeeps. Will you give me a lift down the hill about ten? The cabs won’t come up at curfew time.”

“Where will you be?”

“I’ll turn up here again.” Aster directed his strange grin — curled corners on a hard mouth — at Janice. “If that’s okay with you.”

Janice said to Byron, “Won’t you be sleeping over?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. A hot bath, a real bed? Thanks, I sure will.”

“We’re on twenty-four hours’ notice, Byron,” Aster said.

“I’ll be back at 0800, Captain.”

“Made up your mind yet about staying aboard?”

“Let you know in the morning.”

Janice could guess why Byron was saying nothing about Natalie. The news would only intensify Aster’s pressure on him to remain with the
Devilfish.

“The latest poop is that they’re coming in force to invade Alaska,” Aster said to Janice. “Heard anything like that at Cincpac?”

She shook her head, unsmiling. He grinned at her and left.

“Which lucky lady is he visiting up here?” Janice asked.

Byron’s answer was an evasive shrug.

“Now that’s mean, Briny. I’ll suspect every wife on the hill.”

“Can’t help your evil mind, Jan.”

As they chatted into the evening about the family and the war, moving inside and drawing the blackout curtains, Byron’s manner began to strike Janice as odd. He was wandering in his talk, and giving her awkward, sombre glances. Too much wine? Sexual stirrings? In her brother-in-law that seemed inconceivable. Still, he was a young sailor back from the sea. When he went off for a bath she decided to stay dressed, to keep the lights turned up, and to put away the liquor.

“God, that was marvelous.” He emerged in Warren’s pajamas and robe, towelling his head. “I haven’t had a bath since Albany.”

“Albany?”

“Albany, Australia.” He flopped loose-limbed on the rattan couch. “Lovely tiny town, as far away as you can go on God’s green earth. Wonderful people. Our tender was berthed there. Got any bourbon, Jan?” His manner was quite matter-of-fact.

Janice felt ashamed of her imaginings. She brought two drinks. Stretching out on the couch, he took a swig, and morosely shook his head. “God, to think of seeing Natalie again! And the baby. Incredible.”

“You don’t sound all that happy.”

“There was a girl in Albany. Maybe I’m feeling guilty.”

“Wow.” She made a small drama of falling in an armchair.

“I met her in church. She sang in the choir, a small choir, everything’s small in Albany. Just three other singers and this girl. She played the organ, too. It’s a tiny little toy seaport, Albany — just three streets and a church and a town hall. Clean, charming, lots of lawns, flowerbeds, old nice houses, old oaks, totally British and nineteenth-century. It’s another world.”

“Who is she?”

“Her name’s Ursula Cotton. Her father owns the little town bank. Very sweet, very proper. Her guy is a tank corps officer in North Africa. Our sub had two overhauls, two months apart. Both times we were inseparable, every minute I could get ashore.”

“And —?”

Byron made a despairing gesture with both hands.
“And?
And we sailed, and here I am.”

“Byron, I’m not clear on one point. Did anything happen?”

“Did anything happen?” He angrily frowned. “You mean did I get into her pants?”

“Well, you put it rather horridly.”

“Christ! You, too? Carter Aster, every time I’d come back to the sub, he’d say,
Well, did you get into her pants?’
I finally said if he’d come ashore, and forget about being captain, I’d straighten him out about Ursula once and for all. That ended that.”

“Dear, it makes a difference —”

“Look, I said her guy was fighting in North Africa. What do you take me for? That was a torment, but still it was beautiful. It made life endurable. I’ll never write her. It’s no use. But by God, I’ll never forget Ursula.”