Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [209]
“I better tell you one more thing. I’d rather be prosecuting you than defending you. I don’t know yet just how guilty you are. But you’re either a mutineer or one of the dumbest goofs in the whole Navy. There’s no third possibility.” Maryk blinked in astonishment. “If you’re going to give me all the dope, say so, and we’ll work out your defense. If you’re going to stay clammed up because you’re so proud and noble and hurt, say so, and I’ll go on back to town.”
“What do you want to know?” the exec said after a pause filled with cafeteria noise.
“All about you, and Keefer, and Keith, and everything else that explains how you pulled your dumb stunt-”
“Sure, you call it dumb,” exclaimed Maryk. “Everyone does, now that we’re all alive to talk about it. If Queeg and me and the whole ship were at the bottom of the sea-I guess the only way I could have been proved right was if I hadn’t relieved Queeg and the ship had capsized, as it damn near did. Three cans went down in that typhoon, you know-”
“Sure. About forty of them stayed afloat, though, without the exec relieving the skipper.”
Maryk looked extremely surprised. He took out a cigar, and regarded it thoughtfully as he stripped off the crinkling cellophane.
He really was surprised. Greenwald had jarred him into uncovering his secret self-justifying thought, a comfort he had proudly, silently applied to his feelings throughout the official ordeal he was undergoing. The lawyer’s sarcastic twist of viewpoint had never occurred to the exec, preoccupied as he was with his own misunderstood heroism and the treachery of Keefer, and the evil fate closing in on him. “Where are you from?” he said.
Greenwald showed no surprise at the irrelevancy. “Albuquerque.”
“Oh. I thought maybe you were from New York-though you don’t talk much like a New Yorker, at that-”
“Well, I’m a Jew, if that’s what you mean,” the pilot said, with a little grin at his shoes.
Maryk laughed, and said, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Let’s go over to the Chrysanthemum.”
They sat on a leather couch in the lounge of the excursion boat, and for an hour Maryk told the story of how he had become convinced that Queeg was crazy. He ran out of words at last and sat silent, staring out of the window at the clanking yard, bristling with cranes, funnels, and masts. The lawyer lit, a cigar which the exec had given him, and puffed at it awkwardly, blinking. After a while he said, “Did you ever read your friend Keefer’s novel?”
Maryk looked at him with the empty puzzlement of a man wakened from sleep. “He never shows it to anybody. It must be long as hell. He’s always kept it in that black satchel.”
“Probably a masterpiece.”
“Well, Tom’s smart, no getting away from that-”
“I’d like to read it. I’m sure that it exposes this war in all its grim futility and waste, and shows up the military men for the stupid, Fascist-minded sadists they are. Bitching up all the campaigns and throwing away the lives of fatalistic, humorous, lovable citizen-soldiers. Lots of sex scenes where the prose becomes rhythmic and beautiful while the girl gets her pants pulled down.” Greenwald saw Maryk’s mystified suspicious smile, and shrugged. “Well, I can tell, because war novels are coming out already and the war is still on. I read ’em all. I like novels where the author proves how terrible military guys are, and how superior sensitive civilians are. I know they’re true to life because I’m a sensitive civilian myself.” He puffed at the cigar, made a mouth of distaste, and threw it into a brass jar half full of sand. “How can you smoke those things? ... Well, I’ll tell you, Maryk. Your sensitive novelist friend is the villain of this foul-up, all right, but it doesn’t do us any good-”
“I want him left out of it,” said Maryk doggedly.
“He’s got to be. If I can help it he’ll never be put on the stand. What you did, you did. Actually it’s better that you did it out of your own mistaken but noble judgment than that you took the psychiatric opinions of a