Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [116]
The officers and crew were billeted in nearby barracks. Only the duty officer and a gangway watch remained to connect the defunct shell with its former identity. Captain Queeg had shot off to his home in Arizona a couple of hours after the ship had entered the dock, leaving Gorton in charge. Adams, Carmody, Rabbitt, and Paynter had gone on leave, and the crew seethed unhappily in the barracks, waiting for the fifth day in the States, when their leaves could commence. Their spirits were at such ebb, the atmosphere in their barracks so funereal, that even Maryk, friendly though he was with the sailors, could hardly bear to visit them for a muster.
He went topside, emerging into a gray cloudy morning, and picked his way carefully over and around the litter of pipes, hoses, parts of machines, lumber, tarpaulins, and crates. At the gangway he found the duty petty officer, Meatball, in dirty wrinkled whites, asleep on a coil of manila rope. He roused him without bitterness, and sent the yawning coxswain across the long gray gangplank that spanned the gulf of the dry dock, to buy coffee and doughnuts.
At eight o’clock Ensign Harding staggered aboard, his face bluish-gray. He relieved the first lieutenant, wobbled to the wardroom, and fell asleep on the couch on a prickly pile of knives and forks.
Maryk went to the BOQ and tried to rouse Keefer, but the novelist groaned, “See you St. Francis lunch one o’clock,” and fell obstinately asleep in an instant. The first lieutenant changed into dress blues still rank of camphor despite a cleaning, and caught a bus to the city.
San Francisco was his boyhood home, and he had been full of nostalgia for it from the moment the Caine had steamed under the Golden Gate Bridge. But finding himself on Market Street again, he didn’t know what to do with himself. He killed time in aimless dull wandering until one o’clock.
Keefer was waiting for him in the lobby of the St. Francis, slouched in an armchair, looking pallid and weedy. They went to the ornate dining room and ate an elaborate costly lunch. The novelist insisted on ordering a bottle of champagne to celebrate their temporary freedom from Queeg. He drank most of it himself. Maryk thought it tasted like sweet beer. “What’s the matter, Steve?” said Keefer. “You’re way down in the dumps.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Couldn’t tell you. Ever have one of those days, Tom, when you feel something bad is in the air-something bad’s going to happen to you before the day’s out?”
“Sure. That your trouble?”
“Maybe so. Ever since I got up, I don’t know, everything’s seemed so gray and lousy.” He glanced around. “I feel damn funny in this place. Steve Maryk eating in the St. Francis. When I was a kid I thought only millionaires ate here.”
“How does Frisco look to you after-how many years?”
“Ten, I guess-we moved to Pedro in ’33. Lousy. I feel like a goddamn ghost.”
“That’s your trouble, then. Seeing your childhood home will do it to you-the sense of the passing of time. It’s the cold breath of death, Steve, on the back of your neck.”
Maryk grinned wryly. “Cold breath of death. Stick it in your novel.”
Rain began to splatter against the window by which they sat. Maryk said, “There goes the plan to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, if you were still figuring on it.”
“Hell, that was romantic nonsense. I get carried away sometimes. We’re going out to Berkeley. I’ve got something on the fire there.”
“What?”
“I know an English prof there. Phoned him this morning. He invited us out to a literary tea. Main thing is, the literary club is ninety per cent girls.”
“I’ll try anything.”
“You’ll have to listen to me talk on ‘The Novel in World War II,’ God help you.”
“That’s okay.” Maryk lit a cigar.
Both officers felt the queerness of being away from the ship, in a luxurious hotel, in dress blues. They looked like strangers to each other. And, like strangers thrown together, they began to talk of very personal things. They exchanged full accounts of their family backgrounds. In a half hour Maryk