Herman Wouk - The Winds of War

“I can swim pretty good.”

Larkin looked nonplussed, then he burst out laughing. “Oh, sit down, Pug.”

“Do I get a ship?”

“ Sit down. ”

Pug sat.

“What’s the matter, Pug? You look green around the gills, and you don’t act right. Is everything okay?”

“I drank too much brandy last night.”

“You did? You?”

“I didn’t like losing the California .”

“I see. How’s Rhoda?”

“Just fine.” Victor Henry thought he brought the words out calmly, but Larkin raised his eyebrows. Folding fat fingers over his white-clad paunch, Larkin stared thoughtfully at Henry.

“Let’s see. You have a boy on the Enterprise , don’t you? Is he all right?”

“He’s fine. I have a submariner, too. He’s on the Devilfish . Or was.”

“The Devilfish , eh?” Larkin’s calm tone was very forced.

“Yes.”

Opening a folder on his desk, Larkin studied several sheets clipped inside. “The Northampton might conceivably be available. I say might . Most likely not.”

“The Northampton? God love you, Jocko, that’s about the heaviest thing we’ve got left here.”

“Pug, I don’t care. A cruiser command doesn’t compare to Cincpac’s Deputy Chief for Operations. You know that! Tim Saunders came out of that job last year with two stars, junior as hell. Even if I could get you the Northampton , you’d be making the mistake of your life.”

“You don’t know the mistakes I’ve made. Now you listen to me, Jocko. I’ve shuffled all the high-strategy paper I ever want to in this Navy. Four years in War Plans, nearly three years in Europe. I’m not bucking for two stars, not any more. I’m a sailor and a gunner, and there’s a war on.” Victor Henry swept an arm at the window and the shattered battle fleet. “If you can’t find me anything else, I’ll take a squadron of minesweepers. Okay? I want to go to sea .”

“I hear you, loud and clear.” Heaving a sigh that turned into a groan, Jocko Larkin said, “One more flap I’ll have with the admiral, that’s all.”

“The hell with that. I want him to know this is my doing, Where is he?”

“Listen, Pug, if you talk to the admiral the way you’ve been talking to me, you’ll get sent to the States on a medical. You look like death warmed over, and you’re acting shell-shocked. I’ll see what I can do here. Get some sleep, lay off the brandy, and whatever’s bothering you, put it on ice. I’ll try to find something.”

“Thanks, Jocko. If you want to call me, I’ll be at my son’s house.” He gave Larkin the number.

As they shook hands over the table, Captain Larkin said with odd softness, “When you write Rhoda, give her my love.”

Naval Officers Club

Pearl Harbor

12 December, 1941

Dear Rhoda:

I’m somewhat stymied by the problem of answering your astounding letter, but putting it off won’t give me any inspiration. I don’t think I should waste your time setting down my feelings on paper. Anyway, I’m not sure I can do it, not being very good at that sort of thing, at best.

If I really believed this move would make you happy, maybe I could endure it better. However, it strikes me as a calamity for you as well as for me; and I am expressing this opinion though it hasn’t been asked for.

I know I’m no Don Juan, and in fact have been pretty much of a pickle-face around you a good part of the time. The reasons for this are complicated, and it might not be too helpful to go into them now. The basic point is that, taking the rough with the smooth, you and I have made it this far. I still love you — a lot more than I’ve showed, perhaps — and in your letter you’ve managed to say a few kind things about me.

I’m compelled to believe that at the moment you’re “love-sick as a schoolgirl,” and that you can’t help it, and all that part. I guess these things will happen, though one’s always caught unawares when the roof falls in. Still, you’re not really a schoolgirl, are you? Getting used to anybody new at our age is a very hard job. If you’re a widow, that’s different. Then you have no choice. But here I am still.

The life we’ve been leading in recent years has put a strain on our marriage. I recognize that, and I’ve certainly felt the strain myself. In Manila I said to Byron that we’ve become a family of tumbleweeds. That’s the truth, and lately the winds of war have been blowing us all around the world. Right now it strikes me that those same winds are starting to flatten civilization. All the more reason for us to hang on to what we have — mainly each other, and our family — and to love each other to the end. That’s the way I’ve worked it out. I hope that on further thought you will, too.

I’ll probably be at sea most of the time for the next year or two; so I can’t make the immediate effort to mend matters that seems urgently called for. Here’s how I’m compelled to leave it. I’m ready to forget — or try to — that you ever wrote the letter; or to talk it over with you on my next Stateside leave; or, if you’re absolutely certain you want to go ahead with it, to sign the papers and do what you wish. But I’ll put up a helluva fight first about that. I have no intention of simply letting you go. In plain words I want two things, Rhoda: first, your happiness; second, if at all possible, that we go on together.

I’ve seen a bit of Warren. He’s turned into a splendid officer. He has everything. His future is limitless. He has the brains, drive, acuteness, toughness, and sheer ability to become Chief of Naval Operations. Byron has come along too. We’ve been fortunate in our sons. I know they’re facing hazards, but the whole world’s in hazard, and at least my boys are serving.

I don’t know what went wrong with Madeline. I’m kind of sick about that, and don’t propose to dwell on it. If the fellow wants to marry her, that may clean the mess up as much as anything can. If not, he’ll be hearing from me.

You were right to say that your news would hurt less because of my orders to the California . In a peculiar fashion it’s working out that way. Ever since I flew into Pearl Harbor on the Clipper, after seeing Wake and Midway in flames, I’ve been living on a straight diet of disaster. Your letter almost fitted in as something normal. Almost.

I’m a family man, and a one-woman man, Rhoda. You know all that. Maybe I’m a kind of fossil, a form that’s outlived its time. Even so, I can only act by my lights while I last. My impression was, and remains, that Fred Kirby — despite what’s happened — is much the same sort of fellow. If I’m right about that, this thing will not work out for you in the long run, and you had better extricate yourself now. That’s as honest a judgment as I can give you.

Victor is a handsome baby, and Janice is a good mother, and very pretty. Our other grandson looks unbelievably like Briny as an infant. I’m enclosing a snapshot I picked up in Moscow from Natalie’s old friend Slote. I hate to part with it, but you’ll want to see it, I know. Let’s hope to God she got herself and that kid safely out of Italy before Mussolini declared war.

Jocko Larkin sends his love. He’s fat and sleek.

That’s about it. Now I’m going to start earning my salary — I trust — by fighting a war.

Love,

It was nearly lunchtime when Victor Henry finished writing this letter, and the officers’ club lounge was becoming crowded and noisy. He read the letter twice, thinking how meager and stiff it was, but he decided against rewriting it. The substance was there. One could revise some letters a hundred times without improving them. The letter he had posted to Pamela Tudsbury (how long ago that seemed!) had been more clumsy and barren than most of the discarded ones. He sealed the envelope.