He would try to explain it to Cahoon, and he knew Cahoon would try to understand. But even so, at the end, he knew that that little echo of disappointment would never finally leave Cahoon's voice. And, being honest with himself, Michael knew that he would not blame Cahoon, because the echo of disappointment in himself would never fully leave his own consciousness, either.
He started to write the letter to Cahoon, carefully printing out his serial number and unit, feeling, as he wrote the familiar ciphers that would seem so unfamiliar to Cahoon, that he was writing a letter to a stranger.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"I'm afraid this may sound crazy," Captain Lewis read, "and I'm not crazy, and I don't want anyone to think that I am. This is being written in the main reading-room of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street at five o'clock in the afternoon. I have a copy of the Articles of War in front of me on the table and a volume of Winston Churchill's biography of the Duke of Marlborough and the man next to me is taking notes from Spinoza's Ethics. I tell you these things to show you that I know what I am doing and that my powers of reason and observation are in no way impaired…"
"In all my time in the Army," Captain Lewis said to the WAC secretary who sat at the next desk, "I never read anything like this. Where did we get this from?"
"The Provost Marshal's office sent it over," the WAC said.
"They want you to go and look at the prisoner and tell them whether you think he's faking lunacy or not."
"I am going to finish writing this letter," Captain Lewis read, "and then I am going to get on the subway to the Battery and take the ferry to Governor's Island, and give myself up."
Captain Lewis sighed, and for a moment he was sorry that he had studied psychiatry. Almost any other job in the Army, he felt, would be simpler and more rewarding.
"First of all," the letter went on, in the nervous, irregular handwriting on the flimsy paper, "I want to make it clear that no one helped me leave the camp, and no one knew that I was going to do it. My wife is not to be bothered, either, because I have refrained from going to see her or getting in touch with her in any way since I arrived in New York. I had to figure this question out and I did not wish to be swayed one way or another by any claims of sentiment. No one in New York has sheltered me or even spoke to me since I arrived two weeks ago, and I have not even by accident met anyone I ever knew. I have walked around most of the day and slept at night in various hotels. I still have seven dollars, which would have kept me going for three or four more days, but slowly my mind has been made up on the proper course that I must follow, and I do not wish to delay any longer."
Captain Lewis looked at his watch. He had a date for lunch in the city and he didn't want to be late. He got up and put on his coat and tucked the letter into his pocket, to be read on the ferry.
"If anybody wants to know where I am," Captain Lewis said to the WAG, "I am visiting the hospital."
"Yes, Sir," the girl said gravely.
Captain Lewis put on his cap and went out. It was a sunny, windy day, and across the harbour New York City, rooted in the green water, stood secure against the gale. Captain Lewis experienced the usual little twinge when he saw the city standing there, peaceful, tall and shining, and hardly the place for a soldier to spend the war. But he saluted with snap and precision in answer to the salutes of the enlisted men who passed him on the way down to the ferry, and he felt more soldierly by the time he went forward to the section of the upper deck reserved for officers and their families. Captain Lewis was not a bad man, and he suffered often from pangs of guilt and conscience, which he dutifully recognized. He would undoubtedly have been brave and useful if the Army had put him into a place of danger and responsibility. But he was having a good time in New York. He lived at a good hotel at a cut military rate; his wife remained home in Kansas City with the children, and he was sleeping with two girls who worked as models and did Red Cross things on the side, both of them prettier and more expert than any girl he had ever known before. Every once in a while he woke up gloomily in the morning and resolved that his time-wasting must come to a halt, that he must ask for a more active assignment in a combat zone, or at least take some steps to inject some real vitality into his own work on the Island. But after a morning or two of grumbling and cleaning out his desk and complaining to Colonel Bruce, he relaxed again and drifted back into the easy-going routine as before.
"I have searched myself," Captain Lewis read in the officers' section of the ferry, as it throbbed at its moorings, "for the reasons that I have acted as I have done, and I believe I can state them honestly and understandably. The immediate cause of my action is the fact that I am a Jew. The men of my Company were mostly from the South, for the most part quite uneducated. Their attitude of mild hostility, which I believe had begun to wear away in respect to me, was suddenly fanned by a new Sergeant who was put in command of my platoon. Still, as I have said, I believe I would have taken this action even if I were not a Jew, although that brought it to a crisis and made it impossible for me to continue living among them."
Captain Lewis sighed and looked up. The ferry was moving towards the lower point of Manhattan. The city looked clean and everyday and dependable, and it was hard to think of a boy roaming its streets, loaded with all this misery, preparing to go to the reading-room of the Library and there spill it out on to paper for the Provost Marshal to read. God only knew what the MPs had made out of the document.
"I believe," the letter went on, "that I must fight for my country. I did not think so when I left camp, but I realize now that I was wrong then, that I did not see the issues clearly because of my preoccupation with my own troubles and a sense of bitterness towards the men around me, a sense of bitterness which was suddenly made unbearably strong by something that happened on my last night in the camp. The hostility of the Company had crystallized into a series of fist-fights with me. I had been called upon to fight by ten of the largest men in the Company. I felt that I had to accept that challenge.
"I had gone through nine of the fights, however, fighting honourably, and asking for no quarter. In the last fight I managed to beat the man who was opposing me. He knocked me down several times, but in the end I knocked him out, as a culmination of many weeks of fighting. The Company, which had watched all the fights, had before this left me on the ground, full of congratulations for the winner. In this instance, when I faced them, looking, perhaps foolishly, for some spark of admiration or grudging respect for what I had done, they merely turned, as one man, and walked away. It seemed to me as I stood there that I could not bear the fact that all I had done, all I had gone through to gain a place in the Company, had been absolutely wasted.
"At that moment, looking at the backs of the men at whose side I was expected to fight and perhaps die, I decided to desert.
"I realize now that I was wrong. I realize now that I believe in this country and in this war, and an individual act like this is not possible. I must fight. But I think I have the right to ask for a transfer to another division, where I can be among men who are more anxious to kill the enemy than they are to kill me. Respectfully, NOAH ACKERMAN, Private, US Army."
The ferry docked and Captain Lewis slowly rose to his feet. Thoughtfully he folded the letter and put it into his pocket, as he crossed the gangplank to the wharf. Poor boy, he thought, and he had an impulse to call off the lunch and go right back to the Island and seek Noah out. Ah, well, he thought, as long as I'm here now, I might as well have lunch and see him later. But I'll make it quick, he thought, and get back early.
But the girl he was lunching with had the afternoon off, and he had three cocktails while waiting for a table, and after that the girl wanted to go home with him. She had been a little cool to him the last three times he had been out with her and he felt he couldn't risk leaving her now. Besides, his head was a little fuzzy by now and he told himself he would have to be absolutely clear and sober when he went to see Noah; he owed it to the boy; it was the least he could do. So he went home with the girl and called his office and told Lieutenant Klauser to sign off for him after Retreat that afternoon.