“I think it’s where it leads,” the policeman said. “If my desire for more moves me to sinful action, then the desire is greedy. If not, I simply want to better myself, and that’s a normal and innocent human desire, and where would we be without it?”
“Somewhere in New Jersey,” the doctor said. “Does anyone ever think himself to be greedy? You’re greedy, but I just want to make a better life for my family. Isn’t that how everyone sees it?”
“They always want it for the family,” the policeman agreed. “A man embezzles a million dollars and he explains he was just doing it for his family. As if it’s not greed if it’s on someone else’s behalf.”
“I’m reminded of the farmer,” said the priest, “who insisted he wasn’t at all greedy. He just wanted the land that bordered his own.”
The soldier snapped his fingers. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s the essence of greed, that it can never be satisfied. You always want more.” He shook his head. “Reminds me of a story,” he said.
“Then put down the cards,” the doctor said, “and let’s hear it.”
In my occupation (said the soldier) greed rarely plays a predominant role. Who becomes a soldier in order to make himself rich? Oh, there are areas of the world where a military career can indeed lead to wealth. One doesn’t think of an eastern warlord, for example, slogging it out with an eye on his pension and a cottage in the Cotswolds or a houseboat in Fort Lauderdale. In the western democracies, though, the activating sin is more apt to be pride. One yearns for promotions, for status, perhaps in some instances for political power. And financial reward often accompanies these prizes, but it’s not apt to be an end in itself.
Why do men choose a military career? For the security, I suppose. For self-respect, and the respect of one’s fellows. For the satisfaction of being a part of something larger than oneself, and not a money-grubbing soulless corporation but an organization bent on advancing and defending the interests of an entire nation. For many reasons, but rarely out of greed.
Even so, opportunities for profit sometimes arise. And greedy men sometimes find themselves in uniform — especially in time of war, when the draft sweeps up men who would not otherwise choose to clothe themselves in khaki. As often as not, such men make perfectly acceptable soldiers. There was a vogue some years ago for giving young criminals a choice — they could enlist in the armed forces or go to jail. This later went out of fashion, the argument against it being that it would turn the service into a sort of penitentiary without walls, filled with criminal types. But in my experience it often worked rather well. Removed from his home environment, and thrown into a world where greed had little opportunity to find satisfaction, the young man was apt to do just fine. The change might or might not last after his military obligation was over, of course.
But let’s get down to cases. At the end of the second world war, Allied soldiers in Europe suddenly found several opportunities for profit. They had access to essential goods that were in short supply among the civilian population, and a black market sprang up instantly in cigarettes, chocolate, and liquor, along with such non-essentials as food and clothing. Some soldiers traded Hershey bars and packs of Camels for a fraulein’s sexual favors; others parlayed goods from the PX into a small fortune, buying and selling and trading with dispatch.
There was nothing in Gary Carmody’s background to suggest that he would become an illicit entrepreneur at war’s end. He grew up on a farm in the Corn Belt and enlisted in the army shortly after Pearl Harbor. He was assigned to the infantry and participated in the invasion of Italy, where he picked up a Purple Heart and a shoulder wound at Salerno. Upon recovery from his injury, he was shipped to England, where in due course he took part in the Normandy invasion, landing at Utah Beach and helping to push the Wehrmacht across France. He earned a second Purple Heart during the German counterattack, along with a Bronze Star. He recuperated at a field hospital — the machine-gun bullet broke a rib, but did no major damage — and he was back in harness marching across the Rhine around the time the Germans surrendered.
Neither the bullets he’d taken nor the revelations of the concentration camps led Gary to a blanket condemnation of the entire German nation. While he thought the Nazis ought to be rounded up and shot, and that shooting was probably too good for the SS, he didn’t see anything wrong with the German women. They were at once forthright and feminine, and their accents were a lot more charming than the Nazis in the war movies. He had a couple of dates, and then he met a blue-eyed blonde named Helga, and they hit it off. He brought her presents, of course — it was only fitting, the Germans had nothing and what was the big deal in bringing some chocolate and cigarettes? Back home you’d take flowers or candy, and maybe go out to a restaurant, and nobody thought of it as prostitution. He brought a pair of nylons one day, and she tried them on at once, and one thing led to another. Afterward they lay together in her narrow bed and she reached to stroke the stockings, which they hadn’t bothered to remove. She said, “You can get more of these, liebchen?”
“Did they get a run in them already?”
“Gott, I hope not. No, I was thinking. We could make money together.”
“With nylons?”
“And cigarettes and chocolate. And other things, if you can get them.”
“What other things?”
“Anything. Soap, even.”
And so he began trading, with Helga as his partner in and out of bed. She was the daughter of shopkeepers and turned out to be a natural at her new career, knowing instinctively what to buy and what to sell and how to set prices. He was just a farm boy, but he had a farm boy’s shrewdness plus the quickness it had taken to survive combat as a foot soldier, and he learned the game in a hurry. As with any extralegal trade, there was always a danger that the person you were dealing with would pull a fast one — or a gun or a knife — and use force or guile to take everything. Gary knew how to make sure that didn’t happen.
It was another American soldier who got Gary into the art business. The man was an officer, a captain, but the black market was a great leveler, and the two men had done business together. The captain had a fraulein of his own, and the two couples were drinking together one evening when the captain mentioned that he’d taken something in trade and didn’t know what the hell he was going to do with it. “It’s a painting,” he said. “Ugly little thing. Hang on a minute, I’ll show you.” He went upstairs and returned with a framed canvas nine inches by twelve inches, showing Salome with the head of John the Baptist. “I know it’s from the Bible and all,” the captain said, “but it’s still fucking unpleasant, and if Salome was really that fat I can’t see losing your head over her. This look like five hundred dollars to you, Gary?”
“Is that what you gave for it?”
“Yes and no. I was going back and forth with this droopy-eyed Kraut and we reached a point where we’re five hundred dollars apart. And he whips out this thing of beauty. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I vill hate myself for doing zis, but you haff me over a bushel.’ And he goes on to tell me how it’s a genuine Von Schtupp or whatever the hell it is, and it’s worth a fortune.
“The way he did it, I couldn’t come back and say, look, Konrad, keep the picture and gimme a hundred dollars more. I do that and I’m slapping him in the face, and I don’t want to rub him the wrong way because Konrad and I do a lot of business. And the fact of the matter is yes, we’re five hundred bucks apart, but I could take the deal at his price and I’m still okay with it. So I said yes, it sure is a beautiful picture, which it’s not, as anyone can plainly see, and I said I’m sure it was valuable, but what am I gonna do with it? Sell it in Paris, he says. Sell it in London, in New York. So I let him talk me into it, because I wanted the deal to go through but what I didn’t want was for him to try palming off more of these beauties on me, because I saw the look in his eye, Gary, and I’ve got a feeling he’s got a shitload of them just waiting for a sucker with a suitcase full of dollars to take them off his hands.”