The bombardment grew worse. Steel fingers were tearing the hill apart, and digging for him—digging for him personally. For another hour they somehow lived, but by no means all of them lived. Jeff felt that each succeeding shell was creating a chemical change within him. He felt he would never leave this evil hill. He sent three more runners back, one at a time. Then the bombardment began to slacken. Jeff saw that the white and gray shells had moved on and were now breaking against the face of Altuzzo, but not on the road from which the German tanks and SP guns were firing.
He did not know that he was sobbing, and praying.
What finished him were the six heavy rockets, the Nebelwürfe, that fell around him. He was on his hands and knees when they came. The blast and concussion crushed him into the earth as a man’s hand swats a fly.
After that he did not know anything until he awoke in the station hospital in Florence. They told him his men held the hill against a counter-attack, but this he did not remember. People called the little hill Baker’s Peak, because it turned out to be important enough to deserve a name. People said we might not have got Futa Pass when we did, except for Baker’s Peak.
Jeff stopped shaking after his two weeks in Rome. But for a long time a car’s backfire, or the casual shooting that goes on in war even behind the lines, would send him face down and quivering in a ditch. So they made him a captain, and gave him a Silver Star, and attached him to Army HQ, which found good use for him as liaison officer with the 15th Air Force in Bari in the spring.
8
Of none of this could he speak, nor could he articulate his hatred of the insensate force that had pounded his will and courage from his body.
Major L’Engle understood all this very well, and he gave Jeff another Blue Eighty-Eight, and watched him until he again was fully asleep.
The Major put his things back into his bag, and washed his hands, “I’ll be back in the afternoon,” he told Quigley. “If he gets wild, call me at the Mission.”
“Very well,” Quigley said.
Jeff Baker rolled over on his side, and for a moment words gushed out of his mouth, and then he relaxed and slept again.
“Poor boy,” Quigley said.
“Yes,” said the Major. “Poor boy. He has a wound that will not heal, and for which there is no Purple Heart.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
1
JEFF RECOVERED QUICKLY, as the Major had predicted, but they made him stay in his room. When his hands stopped trembling without the sedation of the Blue Eighty-Eights, Major L’Engle told him he could soon get back to his work. “But don’t step on any more starters,” he warned, “and don’t get shot at unless you can’t help it.”
Jeff said he wouldn’t, and Major L’Engle asked him whether he’d like to try the narco-synthesis treatment, which might help him. The Major could get the necessary drugs shipped out from the States. Jeff asked the Major whether he thought it was necessary. The Major said it couldn’t do any harm, and might do some good. “Of course,” he admitted, “you’re never likely to have a shock like that again, so you’ll never black out again the way you did. But if there’s another war, Baker, I wouldn’t like to be you.”
“If there’s another war,” Jeff said, “I wouldn’t like to be you either.” The Major laughed at that, and Jeff said he’d think it over. Privately, Jeff didn’t believe any more treatment would be necessary. Somehow he believed he’d licked this thing. He didn’t believe he’d ever be quite so afraid again. Man was superior to explosives. Man had made bombs, and if man so chose man could banish bombs from the earth. He was better than a bomb.
2
Everybody was nice. Almost everybody in the Legation came to see him, or sent flowers. Except the Admiral. Jeff wondered why there was not so much as a note from the Admiral. Then Morgan Collingwood, the Consul General, dropped in on an afternoon, bringing with him a jar of Stateside jelly and some bouillon cubes.
Morgan Collingwood said he was glad to see Jeff was so much better. He said that as senior Foreign Service Officer on the post he would like to be sure that Jeff was comfortable, and safe, and if Jeff wished he could move into the Consul General’s residence for a time. Jeff said this was very nice of Mr. Collingwood, and thoughtful, but he was perfectly comfortable here. Also, it was Quigley’s opinion that the booby-trapping was an act of hooliganism, or general resentment, rather than a specific and deliberate attempt on his life. Jeff saw his chance to ask Morgan Collingwood about the Admiral. He tried to be casual, and remarked, “I haven’t had any word from the Admiral.”
Morgan Collingwood looked uncomfortable, as if his Herbert Hoover collar was suddenly a size too small. “It’s most unfortunate about the Admiral,” he said.
“What’s unfortunate?” Jeff asked.
“Well, the way he looks at things. After a man has been shaped for four years at Annapolis, and forty more in the Navy, then he looks at things differently than we civilians.”
“I don’t get it, Mr. Collingwood.” But Jeff could guess.
“Well, Baker, the Admiral isn’t happy about your behavior. Do you want me to speak frankly?”
“I certainly do.”
“The Admiral heard—from whom I don’t know—that you did nothing to protect the woman you were escorting. He heard that you cowered in the street. Of course the Admiral hasn’t said anything publicly or officially about his feelings. As a matter of fact he praised you at his press conference the other day. The Admiral called a special press conference. He wanted to be sure that a constructive version of the affair appeared in the press at home. But privately the Admiral is chagrined at your conduct.”
Jeff tried to keep silent, but he couldn’t. “That’s too goddam bad,” he burst out. “He can take one of his toy battleships and he can—”
“Now, now!” said Morgan Collingwood. “That sort of talk won’t do you any good.”
“No, of course not,” Jeff said, “except it makes me feel better. Didn’t Major L’Engle explain—didn’t he explain to the Admiral?”
“Yes, he explained, but it only made it worse.” Collingwood leaned over the bed as if what next he had to say was confidential. “You see, the Admiral said he didn’t believe you’d had an injury in the war, because there was nothing in your record to show it. And anyway, he claims there isn’t any such thing as combat fatigue. He quoted General Patton, and he said General Patton ought to know. Remember, Baker, I’m only telling you what the Admiral said. This isn’t necessarily my opinion. As a matter of fact it is not in accord with my own feelings. He said combat fatigue was only malingering, or cowardice.”
“Well, he can have his opinion,” Jeff said, “and I’ll have mine.”
“Now that’s being sensible,” said Morgan Collingwood. “Just continue doing your job, and say nothing about it, and I’m quite sure he’ll get over it. I understand you received a decoration. It might be a good idea to wear it at our next formal function—I think we’re entertaining the French and British in a few weeks.”
“You mean one of those little enamel dingbats?”
“Yes, a little pin for your lapel.”
“I don’t know where mine is,” Jeff said. “I’m not sure I packed it.”
He didn’t say he had never worn it, because he could never be certain he had the right to wear the Silver Star.
3
He received cards from most of the Missions in Budapest, but none from the Russians, the Jugs, the Bulgars, or the other satellites. The Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent him a stilted, insincere note of regret.
He received two cables. The one from Horace Locke said:
RELIEVED HEAR YOU NOT BADLY INJURED STOP WOULD APPRECIATE LETTER.
Jeff felt guilty because he had not written to Horace Locke, and a little foolish for not having thought of him as a confidant, now in this time when he needed an utterly reliable friend in the Department. Should he confide Leonides’ conspiratorial plans to Horace Locke? Gould Horace Locke get to the Secret
ary, if necessary?
He should imagine that Horace Locke could get to the Secretary. After all, Locke had once been a Chief of Division, and an important man in the Department.
He thought Horace Locke might be his man. There was about Horace Locke an almost Biblical aura of unswerving decency and righteousness. Just like his father.
But there was the difficulty of secure communications with Locke.
It would be so much easier if he could tell someone in Budapest. The Admiral he must count out, now. Morgan Collingwood, he feared, would be shocked because it was unorthodox and without precedent. Collingwood might be frightened into blatting it through the whole Department, or freezing it forever inside himself. Quincy Todd and William Quigley were reliable, he was certain, but they would have difficulty in conveying the information to the high quarters where it could be evaluated and a decision reached. Perhaps Fred Keller was the man. He had brains, imagination, and he was top level. But in Leonides’ words, he did not know Keller’s insides.
The other cable said:
DISMAYED HEAR OF ATTEMPT ON YOUR LIFE STOP JEFF PLEASE PLEASE DONT LET ANYTHING HAPPEN STOP AM WRITING FULLY LOVE
SUSAN
This cable worried him, and yet in a way it made him feel good. She had committed herself entirely. She wasn’t just shocked. She was dismayed. He had become part of someone else.
4
Every afternoon when she was not rehearsing Rikki came to see him. Sometimes she brought flowers, and sometimes books from her own library, books printed in the United States, their pages limp from much handling. Some, like Look Homeward, Angel, had been published twenty years before; Jeff had read it but it was good to read again. She wondered why no new American books could ever be seen in the stalls, and Jeff explained to her that in this new kind of war books were considered weapons. They were time bombs planted in the minds of men. Wherever the Soviet controlled, American books were dangerous, and were if possible exterminated.
She came to see him on his last day in bed. He marveled at her chic, her smartness. She wore a blue suit labeled Fifth Avenue but without a Fifth Avenue label. She told him it was an American Army blanket, traded in the black market in Vienna, smuggled across the frontier, sold at a fantastic price in Budapest, and then cleverly dyed and cut by men who loved their craft, and who would use all their skill on blanket wool, for it was the best material available. He wouldn’t believe it. She took his hand and made him feel the cloth.
“It is blanket,” he admitted. “It’s amazing.” He took his hand away.
He was sitting up in bed, with the pillows piled behind him, and wore a robe of white toweling. She leaned towards him, and plucked at the threads of the robe. “This matter of which we were speaking,” she said. “This matter over which we quarreled—”
“What about it?”
“I will do what you want me to do, Jeff.”
“That’s fine, Rikki.”
“Anything you want, I will do.”
“There isn’t anything to do right now. I just wanted to know how you felt.” He knew what she meant.
Then she sat up straight, her head resting exactly on her straight spine, in the manner of dancers. “Every time I think I understand you Americans,” she said, “I find I am mistaken. The ones with wives and four children far away across an ocean, they will chase me. They will tell me they will divorce their wives and forget their children for me, which of course I do not believe but that is what they will say. But you, who have no wife, you hesitate, you shake—look at your hands—you have disturbances of the brain, you have a churning inside you. What is wrong, you Jeff? What is this woman you have back there?”
“She’s just a girl.”
“What is her name?”
“Susan.”
“Susan.” Rikki considered the sound. “So plain.”
“She isn’t plain. She’s very complicated.”
“And all the time you are here, she expects you to have no other woman?”
“I don’t think so, she’s very liberal, and broad-minded.”
Rikki smiled, and showed the tip of her tongue between her teeth. “I would like to meet that Susan!” she said. It was afternoon by the clock, but the night comes fast in Budapest’s winter, and the darkness had come.
Soon Rikki would leave, and he would be alone, and lonely with the loneliness of one who is hurt and far from home, the deep double loneliness of the traveler in a strange city and the alien in a foreign land. He said, “Rikki, come here.”
She said, “Wait.” She turned off his bed lamp, and in the blackness he could hear the rustle of her clothes, and then he felt her weight upon the bed.
5
Jeff was up and dressed when Major L’Engle came in the morning. The Major gave him the usual examination, and then he told Jeff to hold out his hands, palms up. Jeff held out his hands, and the Major laid a newspaper across them. The edges of the paper did not tremble.
“You’ve progressed a long way in twenty-four hours,” the Major said. “All of a sudden, you’re completely relaxed. Haven’t taken any drugs, or anything, have you?”
“Oh, no,” Jeff said.
“You look fine.”
“I feel fine.”
“I didn’t think you’d be this relaxed in a month.”
“Didn’t you?”
“No. You can go out of the house today. Take a little walk. Not too far. Your legs will be a little wobbly. You can go to work tomorrow.”
“Good.”
Major L’Engle put on his muffler and overcoat, and felt in his coat pocket. “Almost forgot. I brought your mail from the Legation.” He brought out a fat packet of airmail, compressed by rubber bands. “These ought to keep you busy a while. You must have a lot of friends back home.”
6
Jeff opened them, starting from the top, with the impatient eagerness of a small boy tearing through a pile of Christmas presents. There were a surprising number of letters from people he didn’t know. Most of them were warm and sympathetic. They wanted him to know that the people back home were behind him. If worse came to worst, the Reds would be paid back tenfold for every injury and insult to an American. They hoped for his speedy recovery.
There were others who wanted to know what he was doing wasting the taxpayers’ money gallivanting around with a Hungarian actress. If he got killed, he probably deserved it.
Three letters, from women, enclosed photographs, and suggested that what he needed was a good, wholesome American girl. Would he correspond with them?
There were letters, and cards, from old friends in the 339th. They wondered what had ever become of him, and hadn’t he had his bellyful of war?
There was a forgotten bill, a year overdue, from a Washington flower shop, with a curt note saying, “We see by the papers that you are in Budapest. Unless this account is settled, it will be referred to your employers.”
There were two notes from strangers requesting small loans.
There was a letter from Susan.
“Dear Jeff—
“I was in New State cafeteria, having my coffee before the nine o’clock conference, when I saw your picture looking at me from the front page of The Post, and all I could see in the headline was the word, ‘bomb,’ and for a long time I didn’t dare read it. I thought, ‘This can’t happen to me—not twice in a lifetime.’
“But I hear from Gertrude Kerns—she’s my friend in the Balkans Division—that a dispatch came in saying you were getting along fine, and would soon be back on your feet. Thank God! Oh, please, Jeff, be careful!
“I am enclosing clippings from The Post, Times-Herald, Star, and News. What really happened? Every story is different. Who was responsible?
“You will notice that the T-H has a photograph of that Hungarian actress, Rikki something-or-other. She looks sort of slinky. I’d never trust a person with eyes like that—man or woman. Now don’t get the idea that I’m questioning you about her, because I’m not.
“Jeff,
you know we didn’t do much talking about us. We never had time. I don’t know when we ever will have time. Judging from the news, time is running out on us.
“Terrible things could happen, Jeff. If it came, you might be captured and interned. That would be a terrible thing, but bearable. I would wait for you, dear. But with so much violence already, who can say whether anyone will pay any attention to the laws of war, and the Geneva Convention, this time?
“Remember how fearful I was? How afraid I was to have you? Now I have changed. I want you, while time remains. I think of the line from Omar: ‘The Bird of Time has but a little way to flutter—and the Bird is on the wing.’ I find I’m beginning to agree with Omar now.
“I am going to make a suggestion. I don’t know whether you will like it or not. It is by no means a démarche. If you do not agree, I will still be here. I will always be here for you.
“Jeff, I am afraid there is nothing left for you to do. We both feel the same way, dear, but there is nothing either of us can do. All the words have been said at Lake Success (what an ironic name for the place) and all the speeches have been broadcast, and all the notes sent and rejected, and all the treaties made and broken.
“I despair.
“And so, Jeff, I suggest that you resign from the Department and come to me.
Come to me, Jeff,
Susan.”
He put the letter with the others on the leather-topped Italian desk, and yanked his overcoat out of the closet. He felt that he must get away from that letter. Why had she written it? Why had she put into hard, clear, written words what he dared not even think? And anyway he felt like a heel and wanted to get out of the room. Logically he shouldn’t have a conscience about Rikki because he had only done what any other man would do if he had the chance. Yet he did feel ashamed. Susan’s letter made him ashamed and he needed to get away from it.