"I didn’t think I was qualified," Steve said.
"Why not?"
"They want people with special skills. I don’t have any. I don’t speak Japanese or French, or anything."
"You’re a Marine parachutist," Hammersmith said.
"I just made corporal," Steve said. "I ain’t been in the Corps a year."
"You’re yellow, is that it?"
"I’m not yellow."
"You didn’t volunteer."
"That don’t mean I’m yellow; that just means I don’t want to volunteer."
"What’s Lieutenant Macklin got on you?"
"I don’t know."
"He doesn’t like you."
"Maybe because they promoted me."
"Maybe. But I do know he doesn’t like you. He thinks you’re a worthless shit."
"I didn’t know that."
"I don’t like you, either," Hammersmith said. "You’re supposed to be a Marine, and you’re yellow."
"I’m not yellow."
"You were given a chance to volunteer for an important assignment, and you didn’t. In my book that makes you yellow."
"They said ‘volunteer.’"
"And you didn’t."
"What do you want from me, Sergeant?"
"I don’t want anything from you."
"Then I don’t understand what this is all about."
"Just a little chat between Marines," First Sergeant Hammersmith said, "is all."
"You want me to volunteer, that’s what this is all about."
"If I made you volunteer, then you wouldn’t be a volunteer, would you?" Hammersmith asked. "Don’t do nothing you don’t want to do. But you know what I would do if I was you?"
"No."
"If I was in an outfit where my company commander thought I was a worthless shit, and my first sergeant thought I was yellow, I would start thinking about finding myself a new home."
(Three)
San Diego, California
17 April 1942
Major Edward J. Banning, USMC, arrived in San Diego carrying all of his worldly possessions in two canvas Valv-Paks.
That fact-that he had with him all he owned-had occurred to him on the Lark, the train on which he had made the last leg of his trip from Los Angeles. He had flown from Washington to Los Angeles.
He had once had a good many personal possessions, ranging from books and phonograph records to furniture, dress uniforms, civilian clothing, a brand-new Pontiac automobile, and a wife.
Of all the things he’d owned in Shanghai six months before, only one was left, a Model 1911A1 Colt .45 pistol; and that, technically, was the property of the U.S. Government. The 4thMarines were now on Corregidor. Banning sometimes mused wryly that in one of the lateral tunnels off the Main Malinta tunnel under the rock, there was probably, in some filing cabinet, an official record that the pistol had been issued to him and never turned in. The record-if not Major Ed Banning or the 4thMarines-would more than likely survive the war. And his estate would receive a form letter from the Marine Corps demanding payment.
His household goods had been stored in a godown in Shanghai "for later shipment." It was entirely credible to think that some Japanese officer was now occupying his apartment, sitting on his chairs, eating supper off his plates on his carved teak table, listening to his Benny Goodman records on his phonograph, and riding around Shanghai in his Pontiac.
He did not like to think about Mrs. Edward J. (Ludmilla) Banning. Milla was a White Russian, a refugee from the Bolshevik Revolution. He had gone to Milla for Japanese and Russian language instruction, taken her as his mistress, and fallen in love with her. He had married her just before he flew out of Shanghai with the advance party when the 4thMarines were ordered to the Philippines.
There were a number of scenarios about what had happened to Milla after the Japanese came to Shanghai, and none of them were pleasant. They ranged from her being shot out of hand to being placed in a brothel for Japanese enlisted men.
It was also possible that Milla, who was a truly beautiful woman, might have elected to survive the Japanese occupation by becoming the mistress of a Japanese officer. Practically speaking, that would be a better thing for Milla than getting herself shot, or becoming a seminal sewer in a Japanese Army comfort house.
Ed Banning believed in God, but he rarely prayed to Him. Yet he prayed often and passionately that God would take mercy on Milla.
He was profoundly ashamed that he could no longer remember the details of Milla’s face, the color of her eyes, the softness of her skin; she was fading away in his mind’s eye. Very likely this was because he had taken another woman into his bed and, for as long as the affair had lasted, into his life. He was profoundly ashamed about that, too. No matter how hard he tried to rationalize it away, in the end it was a betrayal of the vow he had made in the Anglican Cathedral in Shanghai to cleave himself only to Milla until death should them part.
He had met Carolyn Spencer Howell in the New York Public Library. He had been sent to the Navy Hospital in Brooklyn, ostensibly for a detailed medical examination relating to his lost and then recovered sight. But he was actually there for a psychiatric examination. During his time in Brooklyn he was free-indeed, encouraged-to get off the base and go into Manhattan. (There’d also been strong hints that female companionship wouldn’t hurt, either.)
Carolyn was a librarian at the big public library on 42ndStreet in Manhattan. He went to her to ask for copies of the Shanghai Post covering the months between the time he had left Milla in Shanghai and the start of the war. He also wanted whatever she had on Nansen Passports. As a stateless person, Milla had been issued what was known as a Nansen Passport. He had a faint, desperate hope that perhaps the Japanese would recognize it, and that she could leave Shanghai somehow for a neutral country. Because Banning had given her all the cash he could lay his hands on, just over three thousand dollars, Milla didn’t lack for the resources she’d need to get away. Would that do her any good? Probably not, he realized in his darkest moments.
He did not set out to pursue Carolyn as a romantic conquest. It just happened. Carolyn was a tall, graceful divorcee. Her husband of fifteen years, whom Banning now thought of as a colossal fool, had, as she put it, "turned her in for a later model, without wrinkles."
They met outside the library in a small restaurant on 43rdStreet, where he’d gone for lunch. And they wound up in her bed in her apartment. Banning and Carolyn were very good in bed together, and not only because being there ended long periods of celibacy for each of them. They both had a lot of important things they needed to share with someone who was sensitive enough to listen and understand. He told her about Milla, for instance, and she told him about her fool of a husband.
It was nice while it lasted, but now it was over. He could see in her eyes that she knew he was lying when he said good-bye to her and told her he would write. And she actually seemed to understand, which made him feel even more like a miserable sonofabitch.
Since Carolyn knew about Milla from the beginning, they managed to convince themselves for a while that they were nothing more than two sophisticated adults who enjoyed companionship with the other, in bed and out of it. They both told themselves that it was a temporary arrangement, with no possibility of a lasting emotional involvement-much less some kind of future with a vine-covered cottage by the side of the road. They thought of themselves as friends with bed privileges, and nothing more.