"How many books have you got there, Soldier?" Colclough asked.
"Three."
"Three what?"
"Three, Sir."
"Are they government issue?"
Under the woollen underwear there were Ulysses and the Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot and the dramatic opinions of George Bernard Shaw. "No, Sir," said Noah, "they are not government issue."
"Only items of government issue, Soldier," said Colclough, his breath charging at Noah's face, "are to be exposed in lockers. Did you know that, Soldier?"
"Yes, Sir," Noah said.
Colclough bent down and knocked the woollen underwear roughly to one side. He picked up the worn grey copy of Ulysses. Involuntarily, Noah bent his head to watch the Captain.
"Eyes front!" Colclough shouted.
Noah stared at a knot-hole across the barracks.
Colclough opened the book and leafed through some of the pages. "I know this book," he said. "It is a filthy, dirty book." He threw it on the floor. "Get rid of it. Get rid of all of them. This is not a library, Soldier. You're not here to read." The book lay open, face down, its pages crumpled on the floor, isolated in the middle of the barracks. Colclough brushed past Noah, between the double bunks, over to the window. Noah could sense him moving heavily around behind his back. He had a queer, exposed twitching sensation at the base of his spine.
"This window," Colclough said loudly, "has not been washed. This goddamn barracks is a goddamn pigpen." He strode out to the aisle again. Without stopping to inspect the rest of the men waiting silently before their cots, he walked to the end of the barracks, followed lightly by the Sergeants. At the door he turned around.
"I'm going to teach you men to keep a clean house," he said.
"If you have one dirty soldier you're going to learn it's up to all of you to teach him to be clean. This barracks is confined to quarters until reveille tomorrow morning. There will be no passes given to anyone for the week-end and there will be an inspection tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. I advise you to make sure the barracks is in proper order by that time." He turned and went out.
"Rest!" Sergeant Rickett shouted and followed the Top Sergeant and the Captain out of the building.
Slowly, conscious of the hundred accusing, deprived eyes upon him, Noah moved out to the middle of the aisle, where the book was lying. He bent over and picked it up and absently smoothed the pages. Then he walked over to the window that had been the cause of all the trouble.
"Saturday night," he heard in tones of bitter anguish from the other side of the room. "Confined on Saturday night! I got a date with a waitress that is on the verge and her husband arrives tomorrow morning! I feel like killing somebody!"
Noah looked at the window. It sparkled colourlessly, with the flat, dusty, sun-bitten land behind it. On the lower pane in the corner a moth had somehow managed to fling itself against the glass and had died there in a small spatter of yellow goo. Reflectively, Noah lifted the moth off.
He heard steps behind him above the rising murmur of voices, but he continued standing there, holding the suicidal moth, feeling the dusty, unpleasant texture of the shattered wings, looking out over the glaring dust and the distant, weary green of the pinewoods on the other side of the camp.
"All right, Jew-boy." It was Rickett's voice behind him.
"You've finally done it."
Noah still did not turn around. Outside the window he saw a group of three soldiers running, running towards the gate, running with the precious passes in their pockets, running to the waiting buses, the bars in town, the complaisant girls, the thirty-hour relief from the Army until Monday morning.
"About face, Soldier," Rickett said.
The other men fell silent, and Noah knew that everyone in the room was looking at him. Slowly Noah turned away from the window and faced Rickett. Rickett was a tall, thickly built man with light-green eyes and a narrow colourless mouth. The teeth in the centre of his mouth were missing, evidence of some forgotten brawl long ago, and it gave a severe twist to the Sergeant's almost lifeless mouth and played a curious, irregular lisping trick to his flat Texas drawl.
"Now, Tholdier," Rickett said, standing with his arms stretching from one bunk to another in a lounging, threatening position, "now Ah'm gawnta take you unduh man puhsunal wing. Boyth." He raised his voice for the benefit of the listening men, although he continued to stare, with a sunken, harsh grin, at Noah. "Boyth, Ah promise you, this ith the last tahm little Ikie heah is goin' tuh interfeah with this ba'acks' Saturday nights. That's a solemn promith, Ah thweah t' Gahd. Thith ithn't a thynagogue on the East Side, Ikie, thith ith a ba'ack in the Ahmy of the United Thtates of Americuh, and it hath t' be kep' shahnin' clean, white-man clean, Ikie, white-man clean." Noah stared fixedly and incredulously at the tall, almost lipless man, slouching in front of him, between the two bunks. The Sergeant had just been assigned to their company the week before, and had seemed to pay no attention to him until now. And in all Noah's months in the Army, his Jewishness had never before been mentioned by anyone. Noah looked dazedly at the men about him, but they remained silent, staring at him accusingly.
"Lethun one," Rickett said, in the lisp that at other times you could joke about, "begins raht now, promptly and immediately. Ikie, get into yo' fatigues and fetch yo'self a bucket. You are gahnta wash ev'ry window in this gahdam ba'ack, and you're gahnta wash them lihk a white, church-goin' Christian, t' mah thatishfaction. Get into yo' fatigues promptly and immediutly, Ikie, and start workin'. And ef these here windows ain't shahnin' like a whore's belly on Christmath Eve when Ah come around to inthpect them, bah Gahd, Ah promith you you'll regret it." Rickett turned languidly and walked slowly out of the barracks. Noah went over to his bunk and started taking off his tie. He had the feeling that every man in the barracks was watching him, harshly and unforgivingly, as he changed into his fatigues.
Only the new man, Whitacre, was not watching him, and he was painfully making up his bunk, which Rickett had torn down at the Captain's orders.
Just before dusk, Rickett came around and inspected the windows.
"All raht, Ikie," he said finally. "Ah'm gahn t' be lenient with yuh, this one tahm. Ah accept the windows. But, remembuh, Ah got mah eye on yuh. Ah'll tell yuh heah an' now. Ah ain't got no use for Niggerth, Jewth, Mexicans or Chinamen, an' from now on you're goin' to have a powerful tough row to hoe in this here company. Now get your arse inside and keep it there. An' while you're at it, you better burn those bookth, like the Captain sayth. Ah don't mind tellin' you at thith moment that you ain't too terrible popular with the Captain, either, and if he seeth those bookth again, Ah wouldn't answer fo' yo' lahf. Move, Ikie. Ah'm tahd of lookin' at your ugly face."
Noah walked slowly up the barracks steps and went through the door, leaving the twilight behind him. Inside, men were sleeping, and there was a poker game in progress on two pulled-together lockers in the centre of the room. There was a smell of alcohol near the door, and Riker, the man who slept nearest the door, had a wide, slightly drunken grin on his face. Donnelly, who was lying in his underwear on his bunk, opened one eye. "Ackerman," he said loudly, "I don't mind your killing Christ, but I'll never forgive you for not washing that stinking window." Then he closed his eye.
Noah smiled a little. It's a joke, he thought, a rough joke, but still a joke. And if they take it as something funny, it won't be too bad. But the man in the next bed, a long thin farmer from South Carolina, who was sitting up with his head in his hands, said quietly, with an air of being very reasonable, "You people got us into the war. Now why can't you behave yourselves like human beings?" and Noah realized that it wasn't a joke at all.