The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1 Page 13
“Oh, got it now,” he said with a smile. “Responsibility. Admirable concept. One of the cornerstones of our nation.”
“If you’re a patriot.”
“I am.”
“Yeah, I figured that. And respect that. Honestly. But . . . how can I put this without sounding dumb? The responsibility I’m talking about, the responsibility which I actually believe in . . . well, I guess it all comes down to the responsibility you have to yourself. Because I really don’t know much about life, and I haven’t traveled or done anything really interesting . . . but when I look around me, and listen to my contemporaries talking, all I hear is stuff about how other people will work out life’s problems for you. How getting married by the time you’re twenty-three is a good thing, because you’re suddenly relieved of the burden of making a living, or dealing with personal choice, or even spending time by yourself. Whereas I’m rather scared of the idea of entrusting my entire future to another person. Because, hell, aren’t they as fallible as I am? And just as scared?”
I cut myself off. “Am I ranting here?”
Jack threw back his shot of bourbon, and motioned to the bartender for more drinks. “You’re doing fine,” he said. “Keep going.”
“Well, there’s not a lot else to say, except that the moment you entrust your happiness to another person, you endanger the very possibility of happiness. Because you remove personal responsibility from the question. You say to the other person, make me feel whole, complete, wanted. But the fact is: only you can make yourself feel whole or complete.”
He looked at me straight in the eye.
“So love is not a factor in this question?”
I met his stare.
“Love shouldn’t be about dependency, or what you can do for me, or I need you/you need me. Love should be about . . .”
I was suddenly at a loss for words. Jack threaded his fingers through mine.
“Love should be about love.”
“That’ll do,” I said, then added, “Kiss me.”
And he did.
“Now you’ve got to tell me something about yourself,” I said.
“Like what? My favorite color? My star sign? Whether I prefer Fitzgerald or Hemingway?”
“Well?”
“Fitzgerald any time.”
“I concur—but why?”
“It’s an Irish thing.”
“Now it’s you who’s dodging the question.”
“There’s not much to say about me. I’m just a guy from Brooklyn. That’s about it.”
“You mean, there’s nothing else about you I should know?”
“Not really.”
“Your parents might be a bit offended to hear you say that.”
“They’re both dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. My mom died twelve years ago—just before my thirteenth birthday. An embolism. Very fast. Very nasty. And yeah, she was a saint . . . but I would say that.”
“And your father?”
“Dad went while I was overseas in the Army. He was a cop, and a professional hothead who liked to pick arguments with everyone. Especially me. He also liked to drink. As in: a fifth of whiskey a day. Suicide on the installment plan. Eventually he got his wish. So did I—as I spent much of my childhood dodging his belt whenever he was drunk . . . which was all the time.”
“That must have been awful.”
He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.
“This is the world’s smallest violin.”
“So you’re all alone in the world?”
“No, there’s a kid sister, Meg. She’s the real brains of the family: a senior now at Barnard. Full scholarship too. Pretty damn impressive for someone from a family of ignorant micks.”
“Didn’t you go to college too?”
“No—I went to the Brooklyn Eagle. They took me on as a copyboy right after high school. And I was a junior reporter there by the time I enlisted. That’s how I found my way on to Stars and Stripes. End of story.”
“Oh, come on. You’re not going to stop there, are you?”
“I’m not that interesting.”
“I smell a whiff of false modesty—and I don’t buy it. Everyone’s got a story to tell. Even guys from Brooklyn.”
“You really want a long story?”
“Absolutely.”
“A war story?”
“If it’s about you.”
He reached for his cigarettes, and lit one up.
“For the first two years of the war, I was behind a desk at the Stars and Stripes office in Washington. I begged for an overseas transfer. So they sent me to London—and a desk job covering stuff in Allied HQ. I kept screaming to be sent out into the field, but I was told I’d have to wait my turn. So I missed the Normandy landings, and the liberation of Paris, and the fall of Berlin, and us Yanks liberating Italy, and all those big sexy stories which went to the paper’s senior writers—college guys mainly; all second lieutenants upward. But, after a lot of wangling, I did get myself attached to the Seventh Army, as they marched into Munich. It was a real eye-opener. Because as soon as we arrived there, a battalion was dispatched to a village about eight miles outside of the city. I decided to go along for the ride. The village was called Dachau. The mission was a simple one: to liberate a penal camp there. The town of Dachau was actually rather sweet. It hadn’t taken too many hits from our Air Force or the RAF, so the center of the village was pretty much intact. Nice gingerbready houses. Well-tended gardens. Clean streets. And then, this camp. Have you read anything about that camp?”
“Yes. I have.”
“I tell you, every member of the battalion went silent as soon as they’d marched through the gates. They’d expected to meet armed resistance from the camp guards—but the last of them had fled just twenty minutes before we showed up. And what they . . . we . . . found . . .”
He paused for a moment, as if censoring himself.
“What we found was . . . unspeakable. Because it defied description. Or comprehension. Or simple basic human reason. It was so evil—such an outrage—that it actually seemed unreal . . . to the point where even talking about it now almost cheapens it . . .
“Anyway, around an hour after we marched into the camp, the order came from Allied HQ to round up every adult resident of Dachau. The company’s captain—a real hard-assed Southern boy named Dupree from New Orleans—gave the job to two sergeants. I’d only spent a few hours with this battalion, but had already reached the conclusion that Dupree was the world’s biggest loudmouth—a graduate of the Citadel (“The Confederate West Point,” as he kept reminding us Yankees), and the original Mr. Gung Ho. But after taking an inspection tour of Dachau, he was the color of chalk. And his voice just about made it to a whisper.
“‘Take four men each,’ he told the sergeants, ‘and knock on every door of every house and shop in the village. Everyone over the age of sixteen—men and women, no exceptions—is to be ordered into the street. Once you have rounded up every adult resident of Dachau, I want them marched up here in a perfectly ordered single line. Is that clear, gentlemen?’
“One sergeant raised his hand. Dupree nodded for him to speak.
“‘Say they show any resistance, sir?’ he asked.
“His eyes narrowed. ‘Make certain they don’t, Davis—by whatever means necessary.’
“But none of the good people of Dachau resisted the U.S. Army. When our boys showed up at their front door, they all came out meekly—hands above or behind their heads, a few of the women gesturing wildly toward their children, pleading in a language the Yanks didn’t understand . . . although it was pretty damn clear what they thought we might do. One young mother—she couldn’t have been more than seventeen, with a tiny infant in her arms—saw my uniform and my gun, and literally fell at my feet, screaming in horror. I tried to reason with her, saying over and over again, ‘We’re not going to hurt you . . . we’re not going to hurt you’ . . . but she was hysterical. Who could bl
ame her? Eventually, an older woman in the line grabbed hold of her, slapped her hard on the face, then whispered fiercely into her ear. The young woman struggled to calm down—and clutching her baby to her chest, she joined the line, sobbing quietly. The older woman then looked toward me with fearful respect, giving me a submissive nod, as if to say: She’s under control now. Please don’t do us harm.
“Harm you! Harm you! I felt like shouting. We’re Americans. We’re the good guys here. We are not you.
“But I said nothing. I just curtly nodded back, and returned to my observer status.
“It took nearly an hour to round up every adult present in Dachau. There must have been over four hundred people in that line. As they began the slow march toward the camp, many of them began to weep. Because, I’m certain, they thought they were going to be shot.
“It was only a ten-minute walk from the middle of town to the gates of the camp. Ten minutes. Maybe half a mile at most. Ten minutes separating this cozy little village—where everything was neat and tidy and so damn manicured—from an atrocity. That’s what made Dachau about ten times even more extraordinary and terrible: the knowledge that normal life was going on just a half mile down the street.
“When we got to the gates of the camp, Captain Dupree was waiting for us.
“‘What do you want us to do with the townspeople, sir?’ Sergeant Davis asked him.
“‘Just march them through the camp. The entire camp. That’s the order from Allied Command—rumor has it, from Ike himself. They’re to see everything. Spare ’em nothing.’
“‘And after they’ve seen the camp, sir?’
“‘Let ’em go.’
“They did as ordered. They marched those four hundred townspeople through every damn corner of the camp. The barracks, with human waste piled up on the floors. The ovens. The dissecting tables. The mountain of bones and skulls piled up right near the crematorium. As they took them on this guided tour, the camp survivors—there must have been a couple of hundred of them—stood silently in the courtyard. Most of them were so emaciated they looked like the walking dead. I tell you, not one of the townspeople looked a survivor in the face. In fact, most of them kept their eyes fixed firmly on the ground. They were just as silent as the survivors.
“But then, this one guy lost it. He was a well-dressed, well-fed banker type. He must have been in his late fifties: good suit, well-polished shoes, gold watch in his vest pocket. Out of nowhere, he suddenly started to cry. Uncontrollably. The next thing we knew, he broke out of the line, and went staggering toward Captain Dupree. Immediately, two of our guys had their guns drawn. But Dupree waved them away. The banker type fell to his knees in front of the captain, sobbing wildly. And he kept saying this one thing over and over again. He said it so much I remembered it:
“‘Ich habe nichts davon gewußt. . . . Ich habe nichts davon gewußt . . . Ich habe nichts davon gewußt.’
“Dupree looked down at him, really puzzled. Then he called for Garrison—the translator who’d been assigned to our battalion. He was this shy, bookish type, who never looked directly at anyone. He stood by the captain and stared wide-eyed at the weeping banker.
“‘The hell is he saying, Garrison?’ Dupree asked him. The banker’s words were now so garbled that Garrison had to crouch down beside him.
“After a moment he stood up again.
“‘Sir, he’s saying—I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know.’
“Dupree’s eyes went white. Then, suddenly, he reached down and pulled up the banker by the lapels of his suit, until they were face-to-face.
“‘The fuck you didn’t know,’ Dupree hissed at him, then spat in his face and pushed him away.
“The banker staggered back to the line. As the townspeople continued to be marched through the camp, I kept my eye on the guy. Never once did he try to wipe Dupree’s spit off his face. Over and over again, he kept mumbling that phrase, Ich habe nichts davon gewußt . . . Ich habe nichts davon gewußt. A soldier standing near me said, “Listen to that kraut sonofabitch. He’s gone off his rocket.”
“But all I could think was: it sounds like an act of contrition. Or a Hail Mary. Or anything you say again and again to yourself, in an attempt to do penance, seek forgiveness, whatever. And I actually felt for the guy. Because I sensed what he was really saying was, Yes, I knew what was going on in this camp. But I could do nothing about it. So I shut my eyes . . . and convinced myself that life in my village was as normal as ever.”
He paused for a moment.
“I tell you, I don’t think I’ll ever shake the memory of that fat little man in a suit, saying Ich habe nichts davon gewußt again and again and again. Because it was such a plea for forgiveness. And the basis of the plea was so frighteningly goddamn human: we all do what we have to do to get through the day.”
Jack reached for his cigarette. It was dead, so he fished out another Chesterfield and lit it up. After he took a puff, I pulled it out of his lips and took a long, deep drag.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” he said.
“I don’t. I dabble. Especially when I’m pensive.”
“You’re feeling pensive?”
“You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
We fell silent for a moment, passing the cigarette back and forth between us.
“Did you forgive that German banker?” I finally asked.
“Forgive him? Hell, no. He deserved his guilt.”
“But you sympathized with his predicament, didn’t you?”
“Sure, I sympathized. But I wouldn’t have offered him absolution.”
“But say you had been him. Say you were the manager of the local bank, and you had a wife and kids and a nice secure life. But say you also knew that, just down the street from your nice little house, there was the slaughterhouse, in which innocent men, women and children were being butchered—all because your government had decided that they were enemies of the state. Would you have raised your voice in protest? Or would you have done what he did—keep your head down, get on with your life, pretend not to notice?”
Jack took a final drag on the cigarette, then stubbed it into the ashtray. “You want an honest answer?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Then the honest answer is: I don’t know what I would have done.”
“That is an honest answer,” I said.
“Everyone talks about doing ‘the right thing’, taking a stand, thinking about the so-called greater good. But talk like that is cheap. When we find ourselves on the front line—with flak coming at us—most of us decide we’re not the heroic type. We duck.”
I stroked his cheek with my hand. “So you wouldn’t call yourself a hero?”
“Nah—a romantic.”
He kissed me deeply. When he ended it, I pulled him back toward me and whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”
He hesitated. I said, “Is anything wrong?”
“I have to come clean on something,” he said. “I’m not just going to the Brooklyn Navy Yards today.”
“Where are you going?”
“Europe.”
“Europe? But the war’s over. Why are you going to Europe?”
“I volunteered . . .”
“Volunteered? There’s no war to fight, so what’s to volunteer for . . . ?”
“There may be no more war, but there’s still a big U.S. Army presence on the continent, helping handle stuff like refugees, bomb clearance, repatriation of POWs. And Stars and Stripes asked if I wanted to sign on to cover the postwar cleanup. In my case, it also meant instant promotion to the rank of lieutenant, not to mention another stint overseas. So . . .”
“And how long is this additional tour of duty?”
He lowered his eyes, avoiding mine.
“Nine months.”
I said nothing . . . even though nine months suddenly seemed like an epoch.
“When did you sign up for this tour?” I asked quietly.
“Two days ago.”
“Just my luck,” I said.
“Just my luck too.”
He kissed me again. Then whispered, “I’d better say goodbye then.”
I felt my heart miss a beat . . . or three. For a moment I found myself wondering what sort of madness I was getting myself into. But that moment vanished. All I could think was: this is it.
“No,” I said. “Don’t say goodbye. Not yet anyway. Not until oh-nine-hundred.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
It was only a five-minute walk from Sheridan Square to my apartment on Bedford Street. We said nothing en route, just silently clutching on to each other as we negotiated the empty city streets. We said nothing as we climbed the stairs. I opened the door. We stepped inside. I didn’t offer him a drink or coffee. He didn’t ask. He didn’t look around. He didn’t make admiring noises about the apartment. There was no nervous small talk. Because, for the moment, there was nothing more either of us wanted to say. And because—as soon as the door shut behind us—we began to pull each other’s clothes off.
He never asked me if it was my first time. He was just so exceptionally gentle. And passionate. And a little clumsy . . . though hardly as clumsy as me.
Afterward, he was a little aloof. Almost shy. As if he had revealed too much.
I lay against him, amidst the now tangled, damp sheets. My arms were entwined around his chest. I let my lips linger on the nape of his neck. Then, for the first time in around an hour, I spoke.
“I’m never allowing you out of this bed.”
“Is that a promise?” he asked.
“Worse,” I said. “It’s a vow.”
“Now that is serious.”
“Love is a serious business, Mr. Malone.”
He turned around and faced me.
“Is that a declaration of sorts, Miss Smythe?”
“Yes, Mr. Malone. It is a declaration. My cards are—as they say—on the table. Does that scare you?”
“On the contrary . . . I’m not going to let you out of this bed.”
“Is that a promise?”
“For the next four hours, yes.”
“And then?”
“And then, once again, I become the property of the United States Army—who, for the time being, dictate the course of my life.”