From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [225]
“I’m glad you came,” Tommy whispered to Prewitt. “I was deathly afraid for a while that you wouldnt.”
“Oh, I’ve heard a lot about this apartment of Hal’s from Angelo. I want to see it.”
“Oh,” Tommy said softly. “I had hoped it was because of me.”
“Well,” Prewitt said. “Partly you.” He listened to Hal talking softly also.
“Where have you been so long, you little savage? You dont know how I’ve ached to see you. I never know when to expect you. All I can do is hope. I’d be afraid to call you, and I dont even know the number of your regiment anyway. Sometimes I dont think you come to see me except when you need money.”
“I been on extra duty all month,” Maggio lied. “I couldnt get away. You can ask Prewitt.”
“Is that right, Prew?” Hal called.
“Thats right,” Prew called back. “He’s on the shitlist.”
“You liars,” Hal said roguishly. “One lies and the other blandly backs him up. You’re all alike, you soldiers. Fickle as fate.”
“Hell,” Maggio said. “You’re just lucky I was broke this Payday, or I would of got drunked up and got on extra duty again.”
“It seems,” Hal said, “that Tony is always on extra duty around Payday.”
“I am,” Maggio said stoutly. “Seems I always get drunked up on Payday, and then I got extra duty two or three weeks. I always say I aint going to, but every Payday I do. Except this Payday I was broke. Its not that I dont come down because I got money, its just that when I got money I get drunked up. Then I get on extra duty. You see the difference?”
Hal laughed. “Thats rather a fine point, isnt it?” he said. “My simple child of the primitives,” he said. “Thats why I love you. Please dont ever lose your ability to lie so convincingly.”
“But its the truth,” Maggio protested. “I get drunked up and come to town to get a couple pieces of ass, and the goddam MPs pick me up, and then I’m on extra duty.”
“Dont you hate to go to a whorehouse?” Hal asked.
“Well,” Angelo said. “I dont say I like it as well as I would a local girl, but I dont hate it. On this Rock a dogface aint got much choice.”
Prew wondered if he always tangled himself up like this, wanting to laugh. But Hal did not seem to notice it.
“My god,” Tommy said suddenly. “I couldnt stand it. Being a soldier. I’d kill myself. I swear I would.”
“So would I,” Hal said. “But then we arent primitives. We’re abnormally sensitive.”
“I guess that is so,” Tommy said.
Hal laughed. “But do you see, Tony, how the moral scruples of the local women about soldiers is our gain, Tommy’s and mine and the other members of the Third Sex? I think thats very sweetly ironic. It amuses me greatly, because it is indicative of a general turn of affairs that will someday give us the edge entirely.”
“I guess it is,” Maggio said. “Your gain, I mean.”
“Did you hear that, Prew?” Hal called back.
“Yes,” Prew said stoically. “I heard it.”
“Because all these people hate the soldiers,” Hal said, going on and developing the idea like a weaver working for his own amusement, “because they believe soldiers are scum—in fact believe all men are scum, women do, because they have that ghastly thing dangling between their legs—because of that my enemies the women are slowly but inevitably bringing about their own destruction.”
“How is that?” Prew said.
“Isnt it obvious?” Hal laughed. “Look at yourself. For you soldiers there are no women, except the whores. The soldiers have to turn to us because we have no sense of sin, like the respectable women.”
“Oh, I dont know,” Prew said, but he could hear the hollowness in his own voice because this was coming too uncomfortably near the truth.
Hal laughed his sweet boyish laugh, but he did not press the advantage. “You see,” he said gently, “I have a theory about that. My theory is that homosexuality is the direct result of chastity in women.”
“Then how do you explain the lesbians?” Prew countered.
“Touché,” Hal laughed. “I believe though, truly, that all homosexuality is the result of frustration and disappointment in life. The more