"General Rockland," Louise said, "I want you to meet PFC Whitacre. He loves Generals."
The General shook Michael's hand heartily, nearly crushing it, and Michael was sure the General must have played football at West Point at one time. "Glad to meet you, Boy," said the General. "I saw you at the party, sneaking out with this handsome young woman."
"He insists on being a Private," said Louise, smiling. "What can we do about it?"
"I hate professional Privates," said the General, and the Captain behind him nodded gravely.
"So do I," said Michael. "I'd be delighted to be a Lieutenant."
"I hate professional Lieutenants, too," said the General.
"Very well, Sir," said Michael. "If you wish, you can make me a Lieutenant-Colonel."
"Maybe I will," said the General, "maybe I will. Jimmy, take that man's name."
The Captain who had come in with the General fumbled through his pockets and took out a card advertising a private taxi service. "Name, rank and serial number," he said automatically.
Michael gave him his name, rank and serial number and the Captain put the card back carefully in an inside pocket. He was wearing bright red braces, Michael saw, as the tunic flipped back.
The General had Louise over in a corner now, pinned against the wall, his face close to hers. Michael started towards them, but the long-toothed girl stepped into his path, smiling softly and blinking. "My card," she said. She handed Michael a small, stiff white card. Michael stared down at it. Mrs Ottilie Munsell Kearney, he read, Regent…7.
"Ring me up. I'm in every morning until eleven," Mrs Kearney said, smiling without ambiguity at him. Then she wheeled away, her veil blowing, and went from table to table, distributing cards.
Michael got another gin and went over to the table where Colonel Pavone was sitting with the correspondents, two of whom Michael knew.
"… after the war," Pavone was saying, "France is going to go left, and there is nothing we can do about it and nothing England can do about it and nothing Russia can do about it. Sit down, Whitacre, we have whisky."
Michael drained his glass, then sat down and watched one of the correspondents pour him four fingers of Scotch.
"I'm in Civil Affairs," Pavone said, "and I don't know where they're going to send me. But I'll tell you here and now, if they send me to France, it will be a big joke. The French have been governing themselves for a hundred and fifty years, and they'll just laugh at any American who tells them even where to put the plumbing in the city hall."
"I raise you five hundred pounds," said the Hungarian correspondent at the other table.
"I'll see you," said the Air Force Major. They both wrote out IOUs.
"What happened, Whitacre?" Pavone asked. "The General get your girl?"
"Only on a short lease," said Michael, glancing towards the bar, where the General was leaning heavily against Louise and laughing hoarsely.
"The Privilege of Rank," said Pavone.
"The General loves girls," said one of the correspondents. "He was in Cairo for two weeks and he had four Red Cross girls. They gave him the Legion of Merit when he returned to Washington."
"Did you get one of these?" Pavone waved one of Mrs Kearney's cards.
"One of my most treasured souvenirs," said Michael gravely, producing his card.
"That woman," said Pavone, "must have an enormous printing bill."
"Her father," said one of the correspondents, "is in beer. They have plenty of dough."
"I don't want to join the Air Force," sang the RAF in the back room, "I don't want to go to war. I'd rather hang around Piccadilly Underground, Living off the earnings of a high-born – ladeeee…"
The air-raid sirens blew outside.
"Jerry is getting very extravagant," said one of the correspondents. "Two raids in one night."
"I take it as a personal affront," said another of the correspondents. "Just yesterday I wrote an article proving conclusively that the Luftwaffe was through. I added up all the percentages of aircraft production reported destroyed by the Eighth Air Force, the Ninth Air Force, the RAF, and all the fighter planes knocked down in raids, and I found out that the Luftwaffe is operating on minus one hundred and sixty-eight per cent of its strength. Three thousand words."
"Are you frightened by air raids?" A short, fat correspondent by the name of Ahearn asked Michael. He had a very serious round face, mottled heavily with much drinking. "This is not a random question," said Ahearn. "I am collecting data. I am going to write a long piece for Collier's on fear. Fear is the great common denominator of every man in this war, on all sides, and it should be interesting to examine it in its pure state."
"Well," Michael began, "let me see how I…"
"Myself," Ahearn leaned seriously towards Michael, his breath as solid as a brewery wall, "I find that I sweat and see everything much more clearly and in more detail than when I am not afraid. I was on board a naval vessel, even now I cannot reveal its name, off Guadalcanal, and a Japanese plane came in at ten feet off the water, right at the gun station where I was standing. I turned my head away, and I saw the right shoulder of the man next to me, whom I'd known for three weeks and seen before in all stages of undress. I noticed at that moment something I had never noticed before. On his right shoulder he had a padlock tattooed in purple ink, with green vine leaves entwined in the bolt, and over that on a magenta scroll, Amor Omnia Vincit, in Roman script. I remember it with absolute clarity, and if anyone wished I could reproduce it line for line and colour for colour on this table cloth. Now, about you, are things more clear or less clear when you are in danger of your life?"
"Well," said Michael, "the truth is I haven't…"
"I also find difficulty breathing," said Ahearn, staring sternly at Michael. "It is as though I am very high in an aeroplane, speeding through very thin air, without an oxygen mask." He turned suddenly away from Michael. "Pass the whisky, please," he said.
"I am not very interested in the war," Pavone was saying. The guns in the distance coughed the overture to the raid. "I am a civilian, no matter what the uniform says. I am more interested in the peace later."
The planes were overhead by now, and the guns were loud outside the house. The planes seemed to be coming over in ones and twos. Mrs Kearney was handing a card to the MP Top Sergeant who was coming from the kitchen now with his fish.
"Oh, what a beautiful mornin'," sang an American voice near the piano, "Oh, what a beautiful day. I got a beautiful feelin', Everything's goin' my way…"
"America cannot lose a war," said Pavone. "You know it, I know it, by now even the Japs and the Germans know it. I repeat," he said, making his clown's grimace, pulling heavily on his cigar, "I am not interested in the war. I am interested in the peace, because that issue is still in doubt."
Two Polish Captains came in, in their harsh pointed caps, that always reminded Michael of barbed wire and spurs, and went, with set, disapproving faces, over to the bar.
"The world," said Pavone, "will swing to the left. The whole world, except America. The world will swing, not because people read Karl Marx, or because agitators will come out of Russia, but because, after the war is over, that will be the only way they can turn. Everything else will have been tried, everything else will have failed. And I am afraid that America will be isolated, hated, backward, we will all be living there like old maids in a lonely house in the woods, locking the doors, looking under the beds, with a fortune in the mattress, not being able to sleep, because every time the wind blows and a floor creaks, we will think the murderers are breaking in to kill us and take our treasure…"