Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

There had been forty-nine last days, and the greatest pleasure in the world had been to walk back to her room from the restaurant where he made his telephone calls at eight o’clock in the morning, shivering a little in the dampness, and to hear her say delightedly, “Not yet?”

“Not yet!” he had said forty-nine times and, still shivering from the coldness of early morning, had jumped into the warm bed beside her.

During those forty-nine last days, they had grown old together, patient of each other’s weaknesses, and they had even acquired old family friends, men in bars who nodded to them and recognized them as a couple who belonged together, old ladies on street corners who addressed Maria as a married woman, respectable as themselves. And in particular, they had acquired one friend, almost an uncle, or perhaps a brother, a melancholy man who owned a bakery, where hot coffee was served, a wonderful place to have breakfast. The mans name had been Lapa, Louis Lapa, and he had fought with the Germans against the Americans and, a little later, with the Americans against the Germans, fighting both times well, but without enthusiasm. Finally he had been wounded and had returned to his bakery with his foot in a cast, and when Tom and Maria sat down to have breakfast in his shop, he brought hot rolls and coffee, limping badly and coughing, but always smiling. After the first few days he had often sat down to join them, drinking a cup of coffee himself, of course knowing without being told a great deal about Tom and Maria, knowing that they had just met, and that they would soon part, and feeling sad about this, but also companionable. They had come to know Louis well and on one occasion had even invited him to visit them in their room, and they had had a quiet family evening together, with Louis admiring Maria’s beauty the way a friendly brother or uncle might admire the beauty of a young wife. He had called her the most beautiful girl in Rome and had told Tom he was lucky, and Tom had replied that he was indeed lucky, and he had felt this to be true.

They had had many friends, other Americans living with Italian girls, and one of them had been Caesar Gardella, who had turned out to be intensely religious, who had tried to get an audience with the Pope, and who told everyone he was going to come back to Rome and marry his girl after the war was over. His girl’s name had been Gina — she was a cousin of Maria’s or some sort of distant relative. Tom and Caesar and Gina and Maria had sat drinking together on several evenings, and it had been almost like a suburban community, with the men all working for the same big corporation. But after seven weeks, the sergeant at headquarters had told Tom he had to hurry, transportation was available — the plane was due to leave in three hours. After hearing that over the telephone, Tom had raced back to Maria’s room, and it had been then she had told him she thought she was pregnant, she wasn’t sure, but she thought she probably was. There had been no recriminations. She had asked nothing, and he had denied nothing. She, knowing he was married, and knowing he was flying to the Pacific to meet his grinning little man with a gun, had assumed he could do nothing much for her and had been surprised and grateful when he borrowed five hundred dollars from his friends and gave it to her, along with a jeepful of canned goods and cigarettes and chewing gum, all of which was worth a great deal.

“If you are pregnant,” he had said, “will you have the child?”

“God willing,” she had replied, and he had been glad, absurdly glad that in flying to meet his evil, grinning little man with the bayonet, he was leaving a child behind, even if it were to be a child with no father to care for it; a ragamuffin child dancing in the street for pennies, perhaps, but at least a child, which was better than to die and leave nothing, as though he had never been born.

But of course he hadn’t been sure about the child; it had been only a possibility. He had been sure about nothing, as he boarded the plane and sat in the hard, uncomfortable bucket seat, waiting to take off for the long flight to the Pacific. How strange to think that he might have a child, never to see, never to hold, but a child just the same! How strange that after all the long months of killing, there would be finally, perhaps, the birth of a child, and that this would be the one thing he had done in the last two years which could conceivably lead to trouble. This, of all he had done, would be the one deed which could lead to a court-martial, and stern disapproving looks on the part of commanding officers, and colonels shaking fingers in his face, and social ostracism at home, if he ever got home, and divorce, and a very bad name, instead of medals.

How strange, he had thought, as he sat in the plane: what a curious inversion, how to the despair of the chaplains is the inclination of the young soldiers to forget their job of killing and to run off and make love!

He had started to laugh as the plane took off, and above the roar of the engines Mahoney had shouted, “What the hell is funny?”

“We’re all nuts!” Tom had said, with a feeling that he had at last discovered the great fundamental truth. “We’re all nuts, every goddamn one of us — we’re all absolutely nuts!”

“You’re god-damn right!” Mahoney had replied.

“Ever hear of Karkow?” Caesar Gardella had asked an hour later.

Tom had heard of it vaguely, a small island not far from the Philippines, a very small island which the British had held for two months against strong Japanese attack at the beginning of the war, but had finally lost. “What about it?” he had replied.

“I hear,” Caesar had said above the roar of the engines, “I hear they’re going to drop us on it.”

It was just a rumor, Tom had thought, but at such times the rumors are always right. Karkow! What a curious name for a place to die!

The plane had stopped at many places, hurrying to refuel, always in a hurry to get to its destination, until finally it had deposited Tom and Mahoney in a transient officers’ camp in Hollandia, New Guinea, where there was nothing to do but lie all day on cots under mosquito netting and wait for the attack on Karkow. Lying there, drinking heavily chlorinated water or warm beer when he could get it, Tom had wondered what he would do if he were not killed at Karkow, or wherever he was going. What did one do when one had a wife in the States and a woman and maybe a child in Italy? Did one simply take one’s choice? After he had been in New Guinea about two weeks, the letters Betsy had written him almost every night had caught up with him. In the first one he opened she had said:

TOMMY MY DARLING,

Gosh, what a day this has been! At eight-thirty this morning— eight-thirty , mind you — Dotty Kimble telephoned me and wanted me to play bridge in the afternoon. It seems that Nancy Gorton had promised that she would be her partner in a tournament at the club, and at the last minute Nancy got a telegram that John was getting a week-end pass, so of course she simply took off for South Carolina. That left Dotty without a partner in this tournament which she seemed to think was awfully important — you know how seriously she takes things like that. Well, anyway, I said all right, and guess who we played in the very first game? Lillie Barton and Jessie Willis! You’d die if you saw Jessie now — she’s gained about fifty pounds, and she’s worried to death that she won’t be able to take it off after the baby comes. She’s due next month. Anyway, I thought I’d die when I found we were going to play her and Lillie, because you know what sharks they are. Well, to make a long story short, you would have been proud of me, darling — I won’t even try to be modest. Dotty and I won! We each got a perfectly adorable majolica bowl for a prize. I’ve wrapped mine up and stored it with our wedding presents, and after the war, when we buy our house, I’m going to put it right in the middle of our dining-room table, and every morning you can take an orange out of it and think how smart I am!