From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [124]
Stark frowned. “Well in a way yes, but you put it wrong.”
“But if thats true,” Prew said, “what becomes of love? I mean, instead of hard work to succeed, its hard work to marry the boss’s daughter and succeed. And love is cut out altogether. What happens to love?”
“Did you, personally, ever see any of this love?”
“I dont know. Sometimes I think I did, and then sometimes I think it was imagination.”
“It seems to me,” Stark said, “that people only love the things they can get something they want out of. And that they dont love anything they cant get what they want out of. Love, it seems to me, is a matter of expediency.”
“No,” Prew said, remembering Violet, “you’re wrong. You cant say that love dont exist except in romance or imagination.”
“Hell I dont know,” Stark said irritably. “You’re gettin in too deep for me now. All I know is what I said.
“Look: We livin in a world thats blowin itself to hell, as fast as five hundred million people can arrange it. In a world like that, theres ony one thing a man can do; and thats to find something thats his, sam, really his and will never let him down, and then work hard at it and for it and it will pay him back. With me its my kitchen . . .”
“With me its bugling.”
“. . . and thats all I can take care of. As long as I do that right I dont have to be ashamed. And if the rest of them fuck each other, kill each other, blow the whole damned world to hell, its none of my business.”
“But they’ll blow you up with it,” Prew said.
“Fine. Then I wont have to worry.”
“But your kitchen will be gone.”
“So fine. Because I’ll be gone too and it wont make no difference. And thats all I know.”
“I’m sorry, Stark,” Prew said, slowly because he did not want to say it, harshly because he was having trouble getting it said, wishing there was some way, some argument Stark had said, that would allow him not to say it; really almost angry at Stark because Stark had not convinced him when he wanted so badly to be convinced, “I cant. I just cant, thats all. And dont think I dont appreciate it either.”
“I dont,” Stark said.
“But if I did, why then everything in my life I’ve ever done up to now would be no good, thrown away.”
“Sometimes its better to throw it away and start from scratch than to hang on to it.”
“Not if you got nothing else left, and nothing in sight ahead to take its place. You got your kitchen.”
“Okay,” Stark said, flipping away his cigaret butt and getting up. “Dont rub it in. I know I’m lucky, but at the same time I took plenty and did a lot of work, to get it.”
“I’m not rubbin it in. And I would like to work for you, Stark, really I would like to.”
“I see you later,” Stark said, “sometime. Almost time for them to be coming in and I got to be out there to see the meal goes off all right.”
Prew watched him leave, his face still the face of all good cops or all good noncoms, impassive, consciously a mask of iron legality beyond which now, with Stark, there was no more appeal, and with the human curiosity squeezed out of it altogether except for the blankly interested eyes. They lose a lot, he thought, but then like everybody else they probly gain a lot, things that the rest dont know. At least they get to do the work they like.
Then he dropped the whole thing utterly and went back to work, speeding up his pace to meet the supper stuff that began to come in shortly.
It grows dark quickly on islands, or anywhere near the sea. Sunset is a matter of minutes. One minute it is clear up and still full daylight, the next its down and it is night. Standing on the western beaches you can actually see the sea’s deep throat swallowing the golden cracker. Ritz Cracker, he thought, while in the Blue Ridge and the Smokies the sunless mountain twilight lingers bronzely on for hours. You’ve seen a lot of this world, Prewitt, he told himself, feeling his eyes blinking scratchily trying to adjust to the fading light, thats one thing you’ve done anyway.
The Company ate its baked beans and franks under the electric lights and laughingly,