Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [51]
“Why don’t you send in another transfer request, Tom?” said the captain. “I’ll approve it again.”
“I’ve given up. This ship is an outcast, mantled by outcasts, and named for the great outcast of mankind. My destiny is the Caine. It’s the purgatory for my sins.”
“Any interesting sins, Tom? Tell us about ‘em,” said Gorton, leering over a heavy forkful of liver.
“Sins that would make even the naked whores in your picture collection blush, Burt,” said Keefer, raising a hoot of laughter at the exec.
The captain regarded Keefer admiringly. “That’s the literary mind for you. I never thought of Caine being a symbolic name-”
“The extra e threw you off, Captain. God always likes to veil his symbols a bit, being, among His other attributes, the perfect literary artist.”
“Well, I’m glad I stayed aboard for dinner,” said Maryk. “You haven’t opened up for a long while, Tom. Been off your form.”
“He just got tired of casting his pearls before swine,” said the captain. “Let’s have the ice cream, Whittaker.”
Willie had noticed a curious mixture of respect and satire in the captain’s attitude toward Tom Keefer. He was beginning to realize that the wardroom was a tangle of subtle, complex evaluations by the officers of each other, knotting centrally, as it were, in the person and attitudes of the captain. It seemed to him that De Vriess must have an insoluble difficulty in facing a subordinate so much more cultured and gifted than himself. Yet somehow De Vriess struck a note with Keefer that enabled him to use an amiable condescension, where he had no right to condescend.
Harding broke his accustomed silence to remark, “Friend of mine was sent to a destroyer called the Abel. Wonder what you’d say if you were aboard her, Mr. Keefer?”
“I’d probably say that I was sacrificing my first fruits aboard her, as God knows I am here, and had some hope they’d be acceptable,” rejoined Keefer.
“What first fruits, Tom?” said Gorton.
“My young years, my early vigor, the time in which Sheridan produced The Rivals, and Dickens, Pickwick, and Meredith, Richard Feverel. What am I producing? A lot of decodes and registered pub inventories. My freshness is spending its wavering shower in the dust. At least if I were on a carrier-”
“You stole that line,” said Willie proudly, “from Francis Thompson.”
“Christ,” exploded the captain, “this ship is becoming a damned literary society. I’m glad I’m getting off.”
“Well, it seems to me, Mr. Keefer,” said Harding, “that you can twist any ship’s name into a symbolical meaning. Caine, Abel-”
“The world is an endless treasury of symbols,” said Keefer. “That’s grade-school theology.”
“I think Harding means that you’re an endless treasury of plays on words,” said Willie.
“Salvo for the junior ensign,” cried Gorton, signaling with a fat forefinger for a third helping of ice cream.
“All intelligent conversation is playing on words,” said Keefer. “The rest is definitions and instructions.”
“What I mean,” persisted Harding, “you can go on spinning those symbols forever, and one’s as good as another-”
“Not quite,” said Keefer, with a brief nod of appreciation at the point, “because the test of the validity of any symbol is the extent to which it’s rooted in reality. What I said about the Abel was a specious verbalism to answer you. But you see I am aboard the Caine.”
“Then we’re all outcasts for our sins,” said Willie.
“Hell, what sins? Keith looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth,” said Maryk. “Look at that sweet face.”
“Who knows? Maybe he robbed his mother’s purse once,” said Keefer. “Sin is relative to character.”
“Wonder what I ever did,” said Gorton.
“It’s hard to know what would be sin in a born degenerate,” said Keefer. “You probably worship Satan in that private stateroom.”
“I,” said the captain, rising, “am going to see that Hopalong Cassidy movie on the Johnson. Tom gives me mental indigestion.”
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