From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [134]
Mrs Kipfer looked as if she were about to vomit. She turned on her heel and went back out into the hall.
“Good,” Stark said. “But mechanical.”
“Why goddam you,” Maureen laughed, triumphantly. She grabbed Stark happily by the arm and pulled him to the Wurlitzer. “Just for that, you can play me some music.”
Mrs Kipfer came back, then, to Prew still standing in the doorway.
“We have so much trouble getting good help anymore,” she said apologetically. “This peacetime draft back home has hurt us terribly over here. You cant know how much. I’m completely helpless, at the mercy of whatever the agency condescends to send me.”
“Sure,” Prew said. “I can see that.”
“Didnt she even introduce you to anyone?” Mrs Kipfer rushed on breathlessly. “Didnt she make you acquainted with anyone?”
“No,” Prew said. “Not to a soul.”
“Oh, dear,” Mrs Kipfer said. “Dear, dear. Well, never you mind. I’ll see you are taken care of. You mustnt feel badly.”
“All right,” Prew said. “I wont.”
“Lorene,” Mrs Kipfer called. “Are you busy, dear? Would you mind coming here a moment?
“It was really Lorene,” she said to him, “that I meant for you to meet. She is really a very nice girl, really. That was really what I had planned,” she said apologetically.
“Oh,” Prew said. “Sure.” He wasnt listening to the rest of it, he was watching the slight brunette, she who had been sitting very poised and quiet by herself, get up and come serenely toward them. He caught something about “almost like a daughter” and “hasnt a mean hair on her head,” but he was not really listening. He had found himself watching her before and now he found himself watching her more, while being careful not to stare. Watching her walking he could see the flat triangle of hair under the thinness of the dress, but with her it was not like it had been with Maureen who had been unaware of it completely. This girl was aware of it, aware of him, but she was utterly above it. She was aware of it and she ignored it.
Must be twenty-three or -four, he thought, noticing that she walked very straight and that her hair was done in a circular roll low on her neck and that she had very wide eyes that looked at him serenely openly. She stopped by them and smiled at him and he noticed her mouth was very wide across the thin childishness of her face, he noticed the long lips were very full especially at the corners. She has a beautiful face, he thought.
Mrs Kipfer introduced them formally, and then asked if she wouldnt look after him because he was new here? if she wouldnt show him around?
“Surely,” she said, and he noticed how pleasingly low pitched, how poised her voice was. It was the voice that belonged with the rest of her. “Lets sit down, shall we?” she smiled.
She really has a truly beautiful face, he thought again as they sat down, a tragic face, a face thats suffered, a face you’d never expect to find in this place. Suffering doesnt make whores beautiful, it makes them ugly. But thats because they do not understand the suffering. But she understands it. Such poised serenity as this, the poised serenity I’ve always hunted after for myself and never found, comes only from great wisdom, the wisdom of the understanding of suffering, the wisdom I’ve never been able to acquire, the wisdom that I need, that maybe all men need, he thought profoundly, and that you never guessed would turn up in a whorehouse. That is probably all it is, he thought, just that I am surprised to see a tragically beautiful face in a whorehouse. That is obviously all it is, he told himself, that and the fact that I am drunk.
“Mrs Kipfer says you are new in Maylon’s Company,” she said, in that low poised voice, that voice of the profoundest wisdom. “Did you just arrive in the Islands? Or did you transfer in from another outfit?”
“Another outfit,” he said, trying to clear the thickness from his throat,