"Yes, Sir," said Christian quietly, getting up to leave, "I will bring the bayonet."
He brought the crude knife the next morning. He stole it at a canteen in the evening while its owner was singing "Lili Marlene" loudly over beer with two soldiers from the Quartermaster Corps. He carried it under his tunic to the marble villa of the silk manufacturer, and slid it under the mattress as Hardenburg directed. He only looked back once from the door, after he had said goodbye to the Lieutenant, looked back once at the two white blind figures lying still in the parallel beds in the tall-ceilinged, rather gay room with the Bay shining and sunny outside through the high, elegant windows.
As he limped down the corridor, away from the room, his boots making a heavy, plebeian sound on the marble, he felt like a scholar who has graduated from a university whose every book he has memorized and sucked dry.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"ATTENTION!" a voice called from the door, dramatic and alarming, and Noah stiffened rigidly in front of his bunk.
Captain Colclough came in, followed by the Top Sergeant and Sergeant Rickett, and began his Saturday inspection. He walked slowly down the scrubbed middle aisle of the barracks, between the stiff rows of barbered and laundered soldiers. He peered heavily at their hairlines and the shine on their shoes, with a hostile impersonality, as though these were not men he was inspecting, but enemy positions. The blazing Florida sunshine struck in through the bare windows. The Captain stopped in front of the new man, Whitacre.
"Eighth General Order," Colclough said, staring coldly at Whitacre's necktie.
"To give the alarm," Whitacre said, "in case of fire or disorder."
"Rip that man's bed," Colclough said. Sergeant Rickett stepped between the bunks and tore down Whitacre's bed. The sheets made a dry, harsh sound in the still barracks.
"This is not Broadway, Whitacre," Colclough said. "You are not living at the Astor Hotel. The maid does not come in here in the morning. You have to learn to make a satisfactory bed, here."
"Yes, Sir," Whitacre said.
"Keep your goddamn mouth shut!" Colclough said. "When I want you to talk I will give you a direct question and you will answer, Yessir, or Nosir."
Colclough moved down the aisle, his heels strident on the bare floor. The Sergeants moved swiftly behind him as though noise, too, was a privilege of rank.
Colclough stopped in front of Noah. He stared ponderously at him. Colclough had very bad breath. It smelled as though something were rotting slowly and continuously in Colclough's stomach. Colclough was a National Guard officer from Missouri who had been an undertaker's assistant in Joplin before the war. His other customers, Noah thought crazily, probably did not mind the breath. He swallowed, hoping to drown the wild laughter that surged in his throat as the Captain glared at his chin for lurking signs of beard.
Colclough looked down at Noah's locker, at the sharply folded socks and the geometrically arranged toilet articles.
"Sergeant," he said, "remove the tray."
Rickett bent over and picked up the tray. Underneath were the rigidly folded towels, the stiffly arranged shirts, the woollen underwear, and under the other things, the books.
"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.